


LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


































No. 157 



* / 

» C/3 


25 Cts. 


Copyright, 18S5, 
by Harper Sl Brothers 


October 21, 1887 


Subscription Price 
per Year, 52 Numbers, $15 


Entered at the L’ost-Oliice at New York, as Second-class Mail Matter 


* f r t 


DRIVER DALLAS 


» • » s 


9 % 5 I 5 


71 Newel 




i e t t i i 




OCT 22 1887 


BY 




JOHN STRANGE WINTE: 


- V 

AUTHOR OP \ 

“cavalry life” “mignon; or, bootles* baby” “houp-la” “pluck” 
“a man of honor” “in quarters” “army society” etc. 


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NV 





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NEW YORK. 

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DRIVER DALLAS. 


CHAPTER I. 

It was on the occasion of a big night in the 
mess of the Royal Horse that one of the guests 
asked a question of the officer who sat next to 
him — a question apropos of another officer whose 
name had just been mentioned. 

“ By-th e-bye,” he said, “I’ve known the Royal 
Horse more or less for six months, well enough to 
call Dallas ‘Driver,’ as you all do, but it never 
occurred to me to ask before who is Dallas when 
he’s at home ?” 

“Why, Dallas of Drive, to be sure,” answered 
Hills, the man whom he had addressed. 

“Dallas of Drive — Dal-las of Drive” in a puz- 
zled tone. “ Why, let me see ; surely I’ve heard 
my father talk about Dallas of Drive !” 

“Nothing more likely. Driver’s father was in 


2 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


the Scarlet Lancers five-and-twenty years ago, or 
thereabouts.” 

“ So was mine. You don’t mean to say Driver 
Dallas can be his son ?” 

“ Yes, but I do,” answered Hills. 

“Bless me, what heaps of times I’ve heard my 
old dad talk about him ! They were at Inkerman 
together, and stood shoulder to shoulder in the 
trenches before Sebastopol, and saved one anoth- 
er’s life dozens of times.” 

“ Oh ! very likely. That was Driver’s father, 
of course. I know he was through the Crimea.” 

“Yes, like mine; and mine got an ugly cut 
across the head at Balaklava which sent him out 
of the Service sharp when peace was proclaimed 
— never could drink a second glass of port at din- 
ner afterwards. Fancy my having heard of Dal- 
las of Drive from my youth up, and knowing a 
son of his intimately for months, without having 
the least idea there was any connection between 
the two. What a little world it is, after all !” 

“ Yes ; but all the same, Driver is not a son, but 
the son ; he has no brothers,” Hills corrected. 

% “A11 the better for him,” said the son of the 
man who never could drink a second glass of port 
at dinner, and who was the youngest of seven — 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


3 


“all the better for him;” and then that subject 
was dropped for another. 

Yet it was, perhaps, not very wonderful that he 
had not happened to hit upon Driver Dallas’s pa- 
ternity, for seldom was Dallas of Drive spoken of 
by his brother officers except as “ Driver ” — a nick- 
name which had been given him at Harrow, and 
had followed him to Sandhurst, and thence into 
the Royal Horse. 

“What’s your name?” was almost the first of 
the many questions which awaited the lad when 
lie first made his appearance at school. 

“ Dallas,” answered young Jack Dallas, simply. 

“Dallas! Oh! Who’s your father? — where 
does he live?” 

“At Drive, in Midlandshire,” Jack replied. 
“He’s Dallas of Drive” 

“Dallas of Drive or Driver Dallas,” laughed 
his inquisitor; “it’s more convenient and less 
pompous.” 

It was thus that he first came by the name of 
Driver Dallas, and afterwards it stuck to him like 
a burr or a bad character, and many were the con- 
jectures concerning it. 

It was such an odd name, some said, as if he 
were an artilleryman ; while others declared it was 


4 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


because he was “such a fearful, headlong dare-dev- 
il.” Some would have it that it was because he was 
such a superb cricketer ; others because of a certain 
stroke he had at billiards. Some fancied, as he 
was seen most often of all the officers in charge 
of the regimental coach, that his skill with the 
ribbons had something to do with it; while oth- 
ers were clever enough to hit upon the truth, and 
guess it had most of all to do with the name of 
his estate. It was a name that suited him well — 
“ down to the ground,” the officers of the Royal 
Horse said. 

He was a good-looking young man, big and 
strong and fair, and a soldier all over him. The 
professions of most men are stamped upon them 
more or less legibly, and the profession of arms 
sets its mark upon its followers with a clearness 
of cut and a fineness of finish which make them 
unmistakable to the practised eye. But Driver 
Dallas was so thoroughly soldier all over him that 
it needed not the eye of the initiated to point him 
out as an army man ; nobody with eyes at all could 
have taken him for anything else. In detail he 
was of good size ; not a giant — not even standing 
fully six feet in his socks, but a good-sized young 
man, of solid and muscular proportions, straight in 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


5 


the back, firm on his legs, and a shade square in 
the shoulders. He had not a strictly handsome 
feature in his face, except that he had a pair of 
steady gray eyes, which looked straight into yours 
— eyes that were as true as steel, unflinching as 
truth, and as honest as the day. 

In spite of not being really handsome, except- 
ing the eyes, Driver Dallas’s face was good to look 
upon and pleasant ; it was fresh and fair in color 
and round in outline. In repose it was, perhaps, 
neither keen nor clever; indeed, there were ill- 
natured folk in the world — those upon whom the 
light of his genial smile had never shone — who 
had been heard to say that Driver Dallas was as 
wooden as a block or a tailor’s dummy; but then 
they were not people whose opinion was a matter 
of much importance, and in the Royal Horse he 
was accepted very much at his proper value, as 
men in the Service generally are. 

“ I don’t know,” remarked one of the fellows 
apropos of Driver Dallas, when his comrade’s looks 
happened to be under discussion one day — “ I don’t 
know that old Driver is much to look at — in fact, 
I suppose, really, he’s only a very ordinary-looking 
chap ; but, dash it all, I’d rather see his solemn phiz 
coming round a corner than any other I know, 


6 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


even if he don’t happen to be on the broad 
grin.” 

“ Which he generally is,” put in another. 

“Yes; old Driver’s a cheery sort of chap in a 
usual way ; a good sort, take him all round ; a bit 
wooden at times when his wits don’t quite take in 
all he hears, and as stubborn as a mule if he gets 
an idea into his head.” 

“ Yes,” struck in a third. “ I don’t know if you 
fellows will agree with me; but he always gives 
one the idea that he would go to the stake for the 
sake of his opinion or a principle.” 

“ Oh ! quite so,” returned the first with decision 
— “ stubborn as a mule — just what I said.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


7 


CHAPTER II. 

As there was but one son, so there was only one 
daughter, of the house of Dallas. Between the 
two there was a difference of seven years, several 
children who had eome between them having died 
in infancy. 

Their mother died at the birth of the girl, who 
lived and grew up to occupy the not unimportant 
position in the county of Miss Dallas of Drive. 
But her place as a wife remained unfilled as long 
as the major lived to rule over the house which 
she had made the brightest and the most popular 
for many a mile around. 

At first the county said that Major Dallas would 
bring another mistress to Drive by the end of the 
year, if not before ; and so he did, but not in the 
same way that the gossips predicted. For he in- 
vited a certain Miss Aurora Pinkerton, an aunt of 
his dead wife’s, to be the mistress of his house 
and the partial guardian of his children. 

The county stood aghast and held up its hands 
in horror, for Miss Aurora (nobody ever called 


8 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


her anything else, not even the children, except 
when they called her auntie) was perhaps the very 
last person in the wide world whom a man in the 
first grief of losing a beautiful and brilliant wife 
might have been expected to choose to fill her 
place towards her children. 

Major Dallas must be mad — simply mad! de- 
clared the ladies of the neighborhood ; the loss of 
his lovely wife must have seriously affected his 
brain ! Or was it only a temporary arrangement? 
and did he intend to bring a wife to take her 
place by-and-by? This question was asked many 
times; for that any man in his seven sober senses 
could deliberately and intentionally set “a flighty, 
fly-away, half-crazy thing like Miss Aurora Pin- 
kerton at the head of his household as a permar 
nence” society in Midlandshire refused to believe. 

Yet Major Dallas was not at all mad, nor had 
he the smallest intention of bringing another 
bride home to the old house; he only remem- 
bered, when he realized that his baby -daughter 
and his seven -year -old son could not be left to 
the care of servants, that Aurora Pinkerton had 
brought up his dear dead wife from a very early 
age, with a result such as made him sure he could 
not make a better or a wiser choice, now that sad 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


9 


fate compelled him to find somebody who, while 
helping him to bring up his children, would not 
be a servant nor yet a wife. 

It was true that the gossips could not be called 
very inaccurate when they dubbed Miss Aurora as 
flighty and fly-away. She wore her light and 
fluffy hair in a crop, which curled all over her 
head and came low down over her forehead, al- 
most to the eyebrows, which were arched with a 
piteous expression of bewilderment, lovely in a 
child, but irresistibly funny in a lady who was not 
so young as she had been ; and under the arched 
eyebrows were blue eyes, which had once been 
pretty and “fetching” enough, but which now 
were faded and short of sight. It is true that she 
persisted in dressing herself in garments so girl- 
ishly youthful that most people took her for a 
child, until they saw the little old face under the 
tousled, fluffy hair. It is true that she persisted 
in driving herself about the neighborhood of 
Drive in a smart little cart with a spirited cob 
pony, which had the most profound contempt for 
his little mistress, and made a practice of kicking 
himself free of his harness about once a month, and 
trotting quietly back to his stable, leaving Miss Au- 
rora comfortably planted in the bottom of a ditch. 


10 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“ And the most amusing part of it is,” said one 
member of Midlandshire society to another, “ that 
the silly little woman won’t have him punished, 
or even try to break him of such a habit — says his 
sense of humor is something simply wonderful.” 

“ His sense of humor?” 

“ Yes. It seems he always kicks up a shine 
when it’s been raining hard and the ditches are 
full. I represented to the fair Aurora that mud 
splashing against his legs might have not a little 
to do with the matter, and with the fact of his in- 
variably choosing a day after heavy, rain for his 
flashes of humor; however, the radiant Aurora 
didn’t, or couldn’t, or wouldn’t see it, and still 
trundles about the country-side at the mercy of 
Jock’s heels, and gets upset into hedges and ditch- 
es periodically, apparently to her intense delight 
and satisfaction.” 

“Umpli! Funny old girl,” laughed the other. 
“It always struck me as being the strangest thing 
out that Dallas should have put such a scarecrow 
as Miss Aurora at the head of his household.” 

“ Yes ; very strange — very strange !” 

However, strange or not, Miss Aurora remained 
at the head of Major Dallas’s household until he 
went to seek his one and only love in a fairer 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


11 


mansion than that made by hands; but this did 
not happen until Irene Dallas was fourteen years 
old — Driver being, of course, twenty-one. 

He, by his father’s will, was left sole guardian 
and trustee of his young sister, for the major’s 
faith m his only son had been great. Two re- 
quests he also left concerning her — firstly, that 
she should never be sent to school ; secondly, that, 
if possible, she should not be taken from Miss 
Aurora Pinkerton’s immediate care. 

Therefore, as Driver Dallas was not married, 
nor even thinking of entering into the holy state, 
everything at Drive went on exactly as it had 
done in the major’s time, the only difference be- 
ing that Miss Aurora and Irene, or, as she was in- 
variably called, Betty, constituted the entire fam- 
ily, except when Driver happened to be on leave 
and at home, which was not often. 

Naturally enough, as the family only consisted 
of a rather flighty old lady and a little girl, vis- 
itors to Drive were few and far between. Now 
and then old ladies arrived to make visits of cere- 
mony, and to drink tea out of the old Derby cups 
and saucers which were Miss Aurora’s pride and 
delight. Now and then Miss Aurora gave a for- 
mal luncheon, to the joy of the cook, who was 


12 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


in the habit of making disparaging remarks on 
things present, and mournful reflections as to the 
evil days upon which Drive had fallen. 

Of a truth the place was wofully dull — so dull 
that the first time Driver came home on long 
leave after his father’s death he was honestly 
troubled that his aunt and sister should be con- 
demned to a life so monotonous and so tiresome. 

“Miss Aurora,” he said, suddenly, one evening 
after dinner, “ it’s awfully dull at Drive now ; 
does it never strike you so ?” 

“ Very often, my dear,” answered Miss Aurora, 
promptly. “ It’s as dull as — ” 

“Ditch-water,” supplied Driver, finding she 
paused for a word which would express dulness 
enough. “I wonder you and Betty don’t die of 
the blues.” 

“We almost do; but at present we can’t make 
any alteration — not in the way of gayety,” Miss 
Aurora replied. 

“No! Why not?” 

“ Our mourning.” % 

“ Ah ! I forgot that,” with a sigh to the mem- 
ory of the gallant heart for whom it was worn. 

A long silence followed, broken at length by 
the young master of the house. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


13 


“I say, Miss Aurora, supposing we were to look 
out for some little girl of Betty’s age, or there- 
abouts, as a sort of companion to her — share her 
lessons, rides, drives, everything; don’t you think 
it would be a rather good sort of arrangement ?” 

“Very good indeed,” returned Miss Aurora, 
passing her hand gingerly over her “crop,” and 
then rearranging the lace - edged handkerchief 
which she wore tucked into the buttons of her 
crape -laden gown by pinching in a corner here 
and tweaking out a corner there. “ Yes, it would 
be an excellent thing, for Betty is too dull ; she 
reads too much, and broods sadly over the dear 
major’s death. She ought to have some one to 
ride and walk and drive with her every day, but 
unfortunately I am too often a prisoner with my 
miserable neuralgia” — not for worlds would Miss 
Aurora have owned to anything so aged as rheu- 
matism — “and mademoiselle is so stupid; she 
cringes at the sight of a cloud, and screams at a 
clap of thunder, more like a lunatic than any ordi- 
nary Christian woman. I don’t know, though,” 
she wound up, reflectively, “ whether one could 
call a Frenchwoman an ordinary woman. I sup- 
pose one couldn’t — not in England, at least.” 

Driver laughed out aloud, and Miss Aurora 


14 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


turned her wide-open and faded eyes upon him in 
mild astonishment. 

“ I assure you it is perfectly true, my dear boy,” 
she said, gravely. “ It was only the other day 
that she went into hysterics because I let Betty 
drive Jock the Second down Tally-ho Hill ; she 
really went on like a silly woman ; vowed we 
should all be killed ; protested that Jock pricked 
up his ears in a dangerously vicious way; and 
declared she would rather walk home, although 
she didn’t know the way, and it was beginning to 
grow dusk already. At that” Miss Aurora con- 
tinued, with a mischievous enjoyment of made- 
moiselle’s agonies which made Driver think all at 
once of a pixie or a sprite, “ I pulled up the pony 
and gave her a chance of being as good as her 
word, which, to my surprise, she was, and away 
Betty and I went in the direction of home. Well, 
we hadn’t gone more than a quarter of a mile 
when it began to snow. 

“ ‘ Mademoiselle,’ said Betty, ‘ will never find 
her way home, and she’s got such - thin boots on.’ 

“ ‘ Mademoiselle, Betty,’ said I, ‘ should wear 
sensible boots, and not make an idiot of herself. 
If she had feet that were worth looking at’” — 
and at this point of her story Miss Aurora took 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


15 


t 

occasion to put “ the prettiest foot in the county ” 
out to the warmth of the tire — ‘“and not like a 
club-foot or a potato — which hers are — one could 
understand her wearing heels at least five inches 
high—’” 

“ Oh ! come, now, Miss Aurora, that won’t do,” 
put in Driver, with mild expostulation. 

“ I assure you, my dear — ” began Miss Aurora. 

“No, no; five inches is too strong; say three,” 
laughed Driver, measuring off three inches on a 
silver paper-knife at hand ; “ say three — and that's 
good measure for heels.” 

“Well, three good inches,” admitted Miss Au- 
rora, unwillingly. “ However, as the snow pres- 
ently began to fall rather heavily, I said to Betty, 
‘Betty, my dear, perhaps we had better go back 
and look after that poor soul ; there’s no saying 
what might not happeu to her, and she has hardly 
sense enough to make herself understood suf- 
ficiently to ask her road.’ 

“Betty said she was quite sure mademoiselle 
would be half dead of fright already, so back we 
went, and when we had got nearly to the place 
where we had left her, sure enough, there she was 
— half dead,” continued Miss Aurora, with an 
emphasis which made Driver laugh aloud again. 


16 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“ Half dead ? No, my dear, she was very much 
alive indeed. I assure you she was sitting on a 
heap of stones like a beggar - woman, or a half- 
starved tramp upon the road, rocking herself pas- 
sionately to and fro, wringing her hands and ut- 
tering little suppressed cries and moans, as if she 
thought a good loud yell would bring an extra fall 
of snow down upon her. She was so terrified she 
never even saw us coming, and, oh ! dear, dear, if 
she hadn’t actually got a string of beads out and 
was trying to count them, as well as her other 
occupations would permit. Now, I ask you, my 
dear boy, if a woman couldn’t say her prayers at 
such a moment — for we will allow that the poor 
weak thing was trembling for her very life — with- 
out counting them on a string of beads, what good 
could they do ?” 

“ Can’t say, I’m sure, Miss Aurora, and you 
know everybody hasn’t got nerves of iron like 
you,” put in the soldier, soothingly. “ And I dare 
say they’ll take note of that up yonder.” 

“Perhaps they will,” admitted Miss Aurora, 
who saw many things through Driver’s eyes. 

“ Still, I’ve no doubt that, however good made- 
moiselle may be as a governess,” he continued, 
“ she is no companion at all for Betty, who really, 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


17 


poor child, must need some one lively about her. 
Where do you think we can find the right sort of 
thing?” 

“ Archibald Rivers goes to India next month,” 
said Miss Aurora, after a moment’s reflection. 

“ And Archibald Rivers is — ” he began. 

“ My second cousin on my mother’s side, and 
his,” she answered. “He lost his wife last year, 
and came home the other day on privilege-leave 
to bring their only child to school.” 

“ How old is she ?” 

“ Fourteen or fifteen — about Betty’s age.” 

“ Then she is the very thing,” Driver said, 
highly pleased. “Will he let her come, do you 
think?” 

Miss Aurora cast a glance at him which an- 
swered the question more fully than any words 
could have done, and at the same time it conveyed 
to Driver’s mind that he had been rather foolish 
to ask it. 

“ Yes, I suppose he would rather like it,” he 
remarked. 

“ It would be a very good thing for her — a very 
different thing from being left at school, which I 
know Archibald Rivers has been dreading.” 

“Poor fellow — well he might; she an only 
2 


18 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


child too, and the wife dead. You’ll write at 
once about it, Miss Aurora, won’t you?” 

“I will,” said Miss Aurora; “I’ll write this 
very night.” 

“He might bring her down and see us all — see 
the place — ” 

“ Oh ! he knows it.” 

“ That’s all the better. I’ll go and have a pipe 
in the study, so as to be out of your way.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


19 


CHAPTER III. 

Miss Aurora lost no time in writing to her 
second cousin on the mother’s side, Archibald 
Rivers; and certainly Archibald Rivers lost none 
in replying, nor yet in accepting the proposal to 
leave his motherless child at Drive as the com- 
panion of Irene Dallas. 

So before he returned to India, or Driver to his 
regiment after long leave, Mabel Rivers had come 
to Drive, and was settled there. 

She was about three months older than Betty 
Dallas, but quite three years older in knowledge 
of the world. Unlike Betty, who was fair, blue- 
eyed, and not a particularly quick or clever child, 
except among horses and dogs, Mab Rivers was 
dark, brilliant, and full of fire, speaking Hindostanee 
like a native, and sitting a horse (to use Driver’s 
words upon the subject) like the very devil. She 
led Betty Dallas, to use a vulgar expression, by the 
nose, for from the very first Betty, metaphorically 
speaking, fell down and worshipped her. She cer- 
tainly livened the old house at Drive in a truly 


20 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


marvellous manner, being gifted with a fine sense 
of humor, and blessed with the fear of nothing, 
standing in awe of neither man, woman, nor child. 
Everybody about the place came under the fire of 
her vivacious and keen wit, from Miss Aurora and 
the stately rector down to the youngest maid in 
the kitchen. 

It was as useless for the stately rector, with his 
three chins and his large and portly presence, to 
try to resist her as for the stout old cook in the 
kitchen to say no when Miss Rivers came begging 
for cream or almonds. 

“Now, Miss Rivers, I ain’t a-going to give ’em 
to you,” was a very favorite reply of that privi- 
leged old lady, who, being thorough mistress of 
her art, was a very important personage at Drive. 

“Just a few almonds, dear old cookie-sweet,” 
was Miss Rivers’s favorite mode of attack; “just 
a few to comfort a poor fatherless, motherless or- 
phan like Miss Betty.” 

“If Miss Betty wants ’em, Miss Betty knows 
how to come and ask for ’em !”■ retorted Mrs. 
Cook, very sharply, one day. 

“ But, cookie darling, I’m just as lonely as poor 
Miss Betty, and you’ve got no end of almonds;” 
and in the end “ dear, darling cookie-sweet ” nat- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


21 


urally had to give in, and “that himp from Hin- 
dia,” as she not unfrequently called Mab, went off 
triumphant with a pocketful of almonds. 

Nobody could resist her, though every member 
of the household tried to do so at first. She 
proved simply irresistible, and she took liberties 
with highest and lowest alike such as had never 
been taken before. She called the lady who pre- 
sided over the household “auntie-pet” and “Miss 
Rora ” by turns ; she hailed the young squire as 
“ Driver ” before she had been in the house two 
hours. 

“What is your name, Mr. Dallas?” she de- 
manded. 

“ John,” he answered. 

“ John ? Oh ! that’s why Betty calls you Jack, 
is it? I thought, perhaps, as Betty’s real name is 
Irene, you would have a poetry sort of a name too. 
Is it plain John — John Dallas ?” 

“It is,” answered Driver, highly amused. 

“And what do the other officers call you — 
Jack ?” 

“ No, they call me ‘ Driver,’ ” he replied. 

“ Driver ! But you’re not in the Artillery ?” 

Driver shook his head. “No, the Royal Horse,” 
he said, as solemnly as if he had been answering 


22 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


questions for an examination or giving evidence 
on a court-martial. 

“Then why do they call you ‘Driver?’” 

The bearer of the name shrugged his shoulders. 
“ At Harrow it was thought very clever to call me 
Driver because I lived at Drive ; and the fellows 
— oh ! well, they call me Driver because one or 
two of them knew me at Harrow, and others 
thought me a drive-ahead sort of a chap, and — ” 

“ Yes, I see !” broke in Miss Mab, who thought 
he had had say enough for the present ; “ they call 
you ‘ Driver,’ so I shall call you ‘Driver ’ too and 
so she did, to the consternation of a good many 
folk, Miss Aurora among them. 

As for mademoiselle, there were times in the 
days which followed on the new order of things 
at Drive when she crossed herself piously every 
time she encountered “ that liimp from Hindia ” 
in any part of the house. 

“ Why does Madsie cross herself when I go near 
her?” Mab repeated, innocently, after Miss Aurora 
one day. “ I’m sure I don’t know ; I and she are 
the very best of friends, aren’t we, Driver ?” 

“ You should say ‘ she and I,’ ” said Driver, wise- 
ly ignoring the question, remembering, as he did, 
that the wretched mademoiselle had, the previous 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


23 


evening, stepped into a tub of cold water when 
coming down-stairs, and with a vivid recollection 
of a dozen other tricks of the same kind. 

“ Why should I ?” she demanded. 

“ Oh ! because you should,” vaguely. 

“ Yes ; but why ?” persistently. 

“I — I — don’t know,” Driver admitted, wishing 
all at once that he had let well alone, and not in- 
terfered with Miss Mab’s grammar. 

“ Oh !” was the young lady’s simple comment. 

Yet, in spite of her being at times the plague 
and terror of the household, Mab Rivers very soon 
ruled every man, woman, and child beneath the 
roof of Drive, because she was so charming and 
so lovable. Mademoiselle continued to cross her- 
self, and Miss Aurora to declare that Archibald 
Rivers’s girl would be the death of her. The old 
cook still called her “that himp from Hindia;” 
but the currants and the almonds still found their 
way by handfuls into the “himp’s” pockets, and 
Archibald Rivers’s girl continued to coax and 
wheedle Miss Aurora into all manner of unheard- 
of and utterly out-of-the-question things ; while, as 
for mademoiselle, in spite of all by-gones her faith- 
ful heart clung so fondly to the most tiresome and 
least creditable of her two pupils that once, when 


24 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


Mab bad managed to tumble herself off a horse on 
to the cobbles of the stable-yard, and was carried 
in-doors in a dead faint, with her head cut and 
bleeding, she wept with such passionate grief as 
to bring on a violent headache which lasted a 
week. 

“I did tink she was qvite dead,” she explained 
to Miss Aurora, when that lady visited her bedside 
the following day. 

But Mab was not dead, nor did she die; on the 
contrary, she got better, and very soon was well 
enough to make the governess repent of her grief 
and her week of headache ; yet even then she, 
with Miss Aurora and every one else, declared there 
was no real harm in her. 

A couple of years very soon passed by — a pe- 
riod of time which made a wonderful change in 
the two girls at Drive. 

Betty at sixteen was lovely, of a fair, placid type, 
not quickly moved either to tears or laughter, yet 
feeling far more deeply than Mab in the constant 
change from fire to ice of her more passionate 
nature. She did most things well, because hers 
was a patient, plodding soul which did not acquire 
knowledge or always grasp a meaning at first 
sight ; to do either was to her a distinct effort, 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


25 


yet being made, it was seldom made in vain. And 
Mab was brilliant, erratic, changeable, as full of 
fancies, whims, and caprices as an egg of meat. 
She was quick in every way — quick of under- 
standing, quick to take offence, and equally quick 
to kiss and be friends again ; she worried every 
one round about Drive, even to the point of dis- 
traction at times, and in spite of it they all loved 
her dearly, dearly. 

It had been arranged that she should remain at 
Drive for three years, or until her father should 
come home for her; or, failing that, be able to 
make arrangements for her journey out. How- 
ever, such was not to be ; for before Mab had been 
two years and a half at Drive, the news came that 
Archibald Rivers was dead, and but for her dis- 
tant connection with Miss Aurora Pinkerton she 
stood utterly alone in a wide world, where, never- 
theless, there is not much room to spare for the 
widow and the orphan. 

“ What will become of the child ?” sobbed 
Miss Aurora to Driver when he brought the 
news. 

“ She will stay here, of course,” he said, curtly ; 
“ where should she go ?” 

“ Dear boy, it is such a weight off iny mind to 


26 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


hear you say that,” she began ; when Driver broke 
in, brusquely enough — 

“ Really, Miss Aurora, I’m surprised at you !” 
he exclaimed. “ What have I ever done that you 
should think — but there, what’s the good of talk- 
ing about it? Will the child take up any more 
room now than she did when her father was alive ? 
Will Betty need her any the less because she has 
lost her father ? Won’t she need care all the more 
because he is dead and gone, poor chap ? Really, 
Miss Aurora, you’re very silly at times.” 

“ I believe I am, Jack,” said Miss Aurora, meek- 
ly, and with a great sigh. “I’m so fond of her, 
and that is the reason, my dear ; and to think of 
her going out as — as a governess, you know, 
and — ” 

“ Oh ! don’t, I say,” he broke in, sharply. “ I’d 
rather you wouldn’t, Miss Aurora, if you please.” 

So it was all settled, and Mab remained at Drive 
just the same as she had been before, only there 
was no looking forward to a journey to the gor- 
geous East. Her grief for her father’s death was 
intense, and Driver had found it a hard task to 
break the news gently and considerately to her. 
Yet, when a few weeks had gone by her tears 
seemed to have all spent themselves. It was not 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


27 


strange, for she was very young, and the young 
have gay hearts; moreover, beyond her black 
frocks, and the fact that there was now no neces- 
sity to think of the Indian mail, whether home- 
ward or outward bound, nothing about her was 
changed. Her father was gone, yet his going 
made no difference to the details of her daily life. 

It was midsummer when this happened, just 
the time of year when those who dwell in the 
heart of a fair and pleasant country live much out- 
of-doors ; a time when birds are singing and bees 
are humming, while the scent of the roses per- 
fumes all the land ; a time when the river is most 
seductive and tennis the most alluring; just the 
time when the earth is fair and lovely as the morn- 
ing. What wonder was it that after the first great 
outburst of grief had passed, Mab Rivers went on 
pretty much as usual — the tease, the delight, the 
worry, and the pride of every heart round about 
Drive? 

“ By Jove,” said Driver, when speaking of her 
one day to Durham, his best friend in the Royal 
Horse, excepting Hills — to whom he would as soon 
mention the name of anything of the gender fem- 
inine and species human as he would flourish a red 
rag in the face of a bull — “ by Jove, you ought to 


28 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


see her. She’s the blithest, bonniest, most daring 
little witch in Christendom ; with wonderful eyes 
that go clean through you and out at the other 
side. And, by Jove, she steps as neat and as clean 
as a new pin ; it’s a sight to see her little smart 
feet go twinkling in and out from under her frills.” 

“ And you’re hard hit, Driver, old man ?” ob- 
served Durham, with great interest. 

“Oh no! I don’t think I am. You see, she’s 
like my sister ; and don’t you know — er — ” 

“Don’t I know what?” Durham asked, gravely. 

“Well, it just makes all the difference; when 
one sees a girl always about with one’s sister it 
makes a difference ; one somehow gets to think of 
her as a sister too.” 

“Yes, I suppose one does. And how will you 
feel when some other fellow comes along who 
doesn’t look upon her at all as a sister, and doesn’t 
want to, by Jove?” 

“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Driver 
Dallas very blankly. 

“ But I think I do,” returned Durham, wisely. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


29 


CHAPTER IV. 

Now these remarks set Driver Dallas a-tliink- 
ing ; not onlj T a-thinking, but a-thinking very deep- 
ly. And he thought of Mab Rivers very often 
between that time and the period of his long leave, 
with the not altogether unnatural result of assur- 
ing himself very thoroughly of what he would 
feel in the face of the contingency suggested by 
Power Durham. 

“Some other fellow coming hanging about after 
Mab,” he muttered; then doubled his fist and 
shook it at the wooer of his imagination. “By 
heavens ! I’d break his neck for him.” 

Yet second thoughts told him with uncompro- 
mising plainness that such a course would not only 
be low but absolutely idiotic. In the first place, 
it would be absurd to assume that such a course 
would be agreeable to Mab herself. Because he 
felt inclined, even to necessity, to “punch the 
head” of any fellow who chose to admire her, 
that was no guarantee that Mab would thank him 
for doing it. 


30 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


True, lie might marry her himself, and so have 
the best of all right to protect her; yet easy as 
that sounds and seems as a course to follow, 
Driver Dallas felt he was by no means free to 
avail himself thereof. For with regard to Mab 
he was placed in very delicate circumstances — cir- 
cumstances which tied his hands, and to a certain 
extent sealed his lips. 

In this way. Major Rivers had not died leav- 
ing much of a fortune behind him ; in fact, a 
modest income of a hundred and few (very few) 
pounds a year would be all that his daughter 
would be able to call her own. By his will he 
appointed Miss Aurora Pinkerton her guardian 
and Driver Dallas her trustee, knowing that in 
such generous hands his one ewe-lamb would be 
safe and happy. 

This modest little patrimony Driver was partic- 
ularly anxious not only to keep intact, but if pos- 
sible to increase. He would, of course, have 
thought as soon of letting Drive out in tenements 
as of taking one penny of money from Mab for 
the expense of her living. 

She knew very little about it. She knew that 
her father had left his property to her, such as it 


was. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


31 


“ Oh, not very much,” he said one day in an- 
swer to her anxious inquiry upon the subject — 
“quite enough to buy frocks and that sort of 
thing.” 

So Mab Rivers remained at Drive well content, 
and never troubled her little head any more about 
the matter. But when Driver set himself to think 
it all over, the aspect of affairs was totally differ- 
ent ; he perceived that until she was of age and 
free of Miss Aurora’s guardianship she must, under 
all or any circumstances, remain at Drive. He 
therefore felt a hesitation about her which he 
would not have felt with any other woman in the 
world, for if he braved all and asked her to be- 
come the mistress of the old house, there was 
more than a chance that she would say no. He 
knew, of course, that she looked upon him with 
the most absolutely friendly eyes, treating him al- 
ways with true sisterly brusqueness and frank un- 
complimentary criticism; in fact, he had more 
than a fear that she would laugh outright if he 
ever went so far as to say one word of love or even 
of compliment to her. 

And if that were so, the effect would be most 
disastrous. Either he must be banished from 
Drive for a long, long time — much longer than 


32 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


he would like — or else she would be craving and 
fretting to leave it. Leave it he was determined 
she should not, and therefore he made up his mind 
to hold his peace for the present, either until she 
was of age or gave him some small sign that she 
would like to remain at Drive forever. 

Long leave came and went. He spent the whole 
of it down at the lovely old house which called 
him master, and insisted on having, to the delight 
of everybody, “ a real good time.” 

Miss Aurora’s neuralgia was very forbearing 
and good, so that she was able to take the two 
girls everywhere where it was impossible they 
could go alone with the master of Drive. 

“ Such a chaperon !” murmured the stately 
dames of their set when Miss Aurora’s “ crop ” 
appeared in ballrooms or at dinner-parties. 

But Miss Aurora did not hear them, and was 
far too well occupied in listening to the bland and 
urbane compliments of the three-chinned rector 
to have cared a fig had she done so; while the 
young people of Drive considered her the very 
pink of perfection as a duenna. 

Yet, although Miss Aurora’s lax rule as a chap- 
eron permitted Driver Dallas to see very much 
more of Mab than is usual, even with young peo- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


33 


pie living under the same roof, lie did not find 
that her manner towards him altered in the very 
least. She was just the same as she had always 
been : bright, vivacious, full of fun, even of mis- 
chief. She skated and danced, rode and drove, 
played tennis or billiards according to wind and 
weather, put up holly wreaths and mistletoe gar- 
lands for the festive season of Christmas, sent 
out cards of greeting, and made him a present 
of a neat little bronze paper-weight represent- 
ing a field-gun unlimbered, which she said only 
wanted drivers and a team of horses to be per- 
fect. 

But she never altered the least little bit in her- 
self or in her manner towards him ; and once 
when he, carried away by the glow in her won- 
derful eyes, murmured a tender wish that she was 
going back to Blankhampton with him, she said, 
so carelessly as to make him shiver, “ Yes, it would 
not be half bad ; but you couldn’t find room for 
us all, and dear auntie-pet would flirt so awfully, 
I’m sure it would not do.” 

Now, as “dear auntie -pet” was in the room, 
and Driver had spoken in a very low voice indeed, 
it was rather quenching when Mab’s clear and 
ringing tones proclaimed her little delinquencies 
3 


34 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


to all hearers, particularly as he had not even been 
thinking of her. 

“ What would not do?” asked Miss Aurora, look- 
ing up from her book ; happily she had only caught 
a portion of Mab’s remark. 

“Nothing,” put in Driver, hastily, with, at the 
same time, a warning frown to Mab. 

Miss Aurora went back to her book, and Mab, 
who had not understood or appreciated Driver’s 
sudden desire for reticence, demanded in a loud 
whisper to be enlightened. 

“I don’t understand, Driver,” she whispered. 

“Well, never mind,” shaking his elbow impa- 
tiently. 

“ But why should I not say she flirts ? She does 
flirt abominably,” Mab protested. 

“Hold your tongue,” said Driver, dropping the 
sentimental for the brotherly tone. 

“Yes, but why? I’m always telling her she 
flirts, dear old angel.” 

“ Well, you needn’t tell her so now.” 

“Why not ?” 

“ Oh ! do be quiet,” impatiently. 

“ What’s the matter ? Are you cross ?” 

Driver’s hands were both in his pockets, so he 
shook the elbow nearest her with that action which 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


35 


in a man expresses the extreme of impatience, and 
a desire to hear no more of a subject under discus- 
sion, and, generally speaking, be let alone. But 
Mab did not see following this course at all, and 
after a moment’s silence she began again : 

“I say, Driver! Driver! Driver! I say, 
auntie — ” 

“ Oh ! do be quiet,” from him. 

“But I want to telLyou something.” 

“ Children, children, don’t quarrel,” broke in 
Miss Aurora’s voice from the depths of a chair 
so big that it would have held three such little 
bodies with ease. 

“We’re not quarrelling, auntie,” asserted Mab. 

“It seems very much like it,” answered Miss 
Aurora, “and sounds awful. I wish you would 
let me enjoy my book in peace.” 

“We will, darling,” promised Mab. “I say, 
Driver,” she added, in an undertone, as Miss Au- 
rora settled herself once more in the big chair, 
“I’d no idea until yesterday that the rector was 
so irretrievably ‘ gone ’ on auntie.” 

Driver’s wrath melted, and gave place to a grin 
immediately, and he drew a step nearer to Mab to 
listen ; she went on, gladly enough : 

“He came to call yesterday,” she said, bubbling 


36 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


over with laughter, “ and Betty and I were just 
coming down-stairs; it was after we had been on 
the lake with you. The rector had come up to 
tea, I suppose, and auntie had taken him to see the 
decorations in the servants’ hall. We couldn’t 
hear what they were saying, but ” — impressively 
— “ we saw — ” 

“What?” asked Driver, with intense interest. 

“They stood a minute under the big mistletoe 
in the hall, while Betty and I fairly hugged each 
other to keep from laughing, for auntie was gab- 
bling nineteen to the dozen, and kept patting her 
‘ crop ’ every second or so, as she does when she’s 
pleased with herself ; and then the rector sudden- 
ly seemed to make up his mind, and put his arm 
as if to place it round her waist. Unfortunately 
auntie went towards the drawing-room at that in- 
stant, and the rector stood with his arm out, look- 
ing so ‘ done ’ that Betty and I nearly choked. And 
then auntie looked back, and, seeing him, called 
out, ‘ Dear rector, what is it ? Cramp ?’ 

“ ‘ No, Miss Aurora ; it’s the heart] answered 
he, in his deepest tones. 

“ ‘ The heart /’ echoed auntie. ‘ My dear rector, 
you really should be careful — at your time of life ; 
this sort of thing is most dangerous. Pray come 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


37 


into the drawing-room, and I will get you a glass 
of wine. The heart — oh, dear, dear !’ 

“ It was a long time,” Mab continued, “ before 
Betty and I dared show our faces, though we were 
simply dying for tea. Even then, before we had 
been in the room a minute, Betty began to giggle, 
and I went off into fits. 

“ ‘ Don’t take any notice, dear rector,’ said auntie, 
in her most indulgent tones. ‘They have been 
on the lake skating, and have come home as gay 
as two old folk like you and I don’t know how to 
be. I like to see it,’ she went on ; ‘ I like to see 
young things enjoy themselves. It’s natural, and 
troubles come soon enough — soon enough ; as you 
say in that pretty, pathetic sermon of yours, which 
always makes us all cry, “Man is born to trouble 
as the sparks fly upward and so it is — poor young 
things; they will soon find themselves, as you and 
I have done, in the sere and yellow leaf.’ 

“ Imagine this,” Mab went on, mischievously, 
“to a festive old gentleman, who had just had seri- 
ous thoughts of putting his arm round her waist ! 
As you may believe, I looked at Betty, and Betty 
looked at me, and then we simply roared.” 

“I don’t wonder,” laughing at her story al- 
most as heartily as if he had been there himself. 


38 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“ Fancy the rector spooney ! That would be a 
funny marriage, wouldn’t it?” 

“ They’ve been long enough making their minds 
up,” remarked Mab, dryly. 

“Well, yes. But — but would you be able to 
make yours up any sooner ?” 

“ I ?” with a look of astonishment ; “ why, I can 
make up my mind on any subject in two minutes, 
if even it doesn’t make itself up without my wor- 
rying at all about it.” 

Driver Dallas could have groaned aloud ; all 
this so thoroughly bore out what he most feared, 
that Mab Rivers’s feelings towards him were of 
the most sisterly description. 

“You know the Royal Horse are going to In- 
dia in the autumn, don’t you,” he asked, abruptly, 

“ after the drill season ?” 

“Yes, of course — but not you,” she said, „ 
quickly. 

“Well, I rather think I shall. I don’t much 
like the idea of leaving the old regiment ; at least, 
not before I get my troop, and get too dignified 
or too fat to mind what sort of a regiment I’m in. 

I rather think I shall try two or three years of the 
life. It’s great fun, so every one who has been 
out there seems to think ; and sport’s good too. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


89 


I rather fancy the idea of going for tigers and 
other such big game.” 

“We’ll have the claws,” said Miss Rivers, with 
calm appropriation — just like a sister would, 
thought the exasperated Driver to himself. 

“ Oh, of course, or anything else that comes in 
my way. Is there anything else you would par- 
ticularly like?” 

“ Heaps of things. I’ll tell you the last thing 
before you leave,” she answered, gayly, “ or we 
might make a list for you, and then you couldn’t 
forget if you tried and then she added, “ How 
fearfully dull it will be without you. Betty and 
I will have to plague dear pet over there till 
she suggests Paris. She only requires a judicious 
amount of bad treatment for that.” 

“What is that about Paris?” called out Miss 
Aurora, who had not caught another word but 
that. “ Nothing shall ever induce me to set foot 
'in that den of iniquity again — nothing ! The last 
time we were there, my dear Jack, the offensively 
familiar way in which the men, one and all — one 
— and ALL — stared at me was most revolting.” 

“I quite believe you,” said Driver, solemnly. 
“ Brutes !” 

“I should like — ” Mab began, then stopped. 


40 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“ But there, as I told you just now, I’ll make a 
list.” 

So time went over. Driver Dallas decided to 
stay in the Royal Horse instead of seeking an ex- 
change, as he had always intended. Days slipped 
by, weeks grew into months, and the day of part- 
ing between him and those at Drive — those whom 
he loved best in all the wide world — came; yet 
no list was ever given, for one was never made. 

“Is there anything you would like me to get 
for you or send to you ?” Driver asked, not so 
much from a wish to discover her pleasure as 
from a desire to tide over the last wrench of 
farewell. 

Mab was silent for a moment ; her brilliant eyes 
were dim, her cheeks blanched of their lovely color, 
her saucy lips, made surely for smiles alone, were 
quivering piteously. 

“If you go to Delaputra,” she said, in a shaking 
voice, “send me a flower or a few leaves from my 
father’s grave.” 

“ I will go there on purpose,” said Driver, in 
tones which were scarcely more steady than hers. 

And then brilliant Mab broke down utterly, and 
hid her face in Miss Aurora’s voluminous skirts. 
The little lady’s kind old hands, small and dim- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


41 


pled still as a baby’s, patted her on the cheek and 
pressed the bowed head to her side. 

“ There — there ! we will take care of each oth- 
er until our boy comes home again,” she said, 
gently. “ But we must not let him go to the other 
side of the world without a blessing to speed him 
on his way.” 

“No, no; Heaven bless and keep you, dear, 
dear Jack !” said Betty, who had wept for weeks at 
Driver’s determination to stay in the Boyal Horse 
for the present. 

“ Heaven bless you all, my darlings !” cried poor 
Jack, wishing wildly, now that it was too late, that 
he had never been such an idiot as to think of 
going. 

But it was no use thinking or wishing aught 
now — his time had come. He took Betty in a 
last embrace, bent and kissed Miss Aurora, then 
bent a little lower still and laid his cheek for an 
instant against Mab’s soft and silky tresses. 

“ Heaven bless you all !” he said again. 

They were his last words, and in another mo- 
ment the sound of wheels crushing the gravel 
without told the three women that he was gone. 


42 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


CHAPTER V. 

In a large and lofty room within the creeper- 
covered walls of an Indian bungalow several offi- 
cers of her Majesty’s Forty-ninth Regiment of the 
Cavalry of the Line — better known throughout 
the service as “ The Royal Horse ” — sat or lay in 
various attitudes best calculated to insure comfort 
during those hours when the fierce mid-day sun of 
autumn streamed down over the town and station 
of Dwalipore — the most, or at least one of the 
most, favored and favorite spots in the whole of 
the Punjaub. 

The heat outside the bungalow was absolutely 
merciless in its intensity, but the room within was 
tolerably cool and comfortable, for over the doors 
were hung tatties of plaited grass, which were kept 
constantly wet, so that a fairly cool air came into 
the darkened apartment ; and the air in its turn 
was kept wafting to and fro by the ever moving 
punkah suspended aloft. 

For a bachelor’s room it was both tasteful and 
pretty. Bold and well - executed water - colors 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


43 


adorned the whitewashed walls, for this was the 
Royal’s first year out, so that Indian damps had not 
as yet played the inevitable havoc and wrought 
the equally inevitable destruction which is the 
usual fate of those articles of “ bigotry and vir- 
tue ” in the land of the pagoda-tree. 

And besides the pictures there were lots of odds 
and ends scattered here and there, almost as jaunt- 
ily as a woman would have disposed them, while 
over the fireplace there hung a very decent look- 
ing-glass. 

Naturally there was not a very great abundance 
of furniture, such as there was being carefully ar- 
ranged, so that the occupants of the room might 
be immediately under the current of air caused 
by the waving punkah overhead ; there were sev- 
eral tables and stands, and seven or eight wicker 
or bamboo chairs and lounges of very large di- 
mensions. 

“ Oh! come now, Driver,” said one of the loung- 
ers at last, looking at the only man in the room 
who was not lounging — Driver Dallas. 

“ I haven’t,” replied Driver Dallas, with a laugh. 
“ I give you my word, Simla was simply as dull as 
ditch-water. Talk about that being a lively spot 
— oh, dear ! Nothing to do all day long but chat- 


44 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


ter scandal and gossip — unless it’s to ride or trail 
up and down, up and down, those beastly chuds 
and ghauts. And yet people out here rave about 
Simla, and compare it to the places at home — 
Brighton and Scarborough, and so on. Brighton 
and Scarborough !” ended Driver Dallas, with pro- 
found contempt. “ By Jove, I know I’d rather 
go and eat shrimps at Margate any day.” 

“ Yes, I dare say,” put in Hills. “ But, Driver, 
old man, putting the respective merits of Simla 
and Margate altogether out of the question, it is 
quite certain that you cannot have been up there 
all these weeks without having brought back 
some news about somebody.” 

Driver Dallas considered the remark gravely 
for a minute or so. 

“Well, Ned Smith’s going to be married — if 
you call that news,” he said at length. 

“Ned Smith !” cried one. 

“ Going to be married !” cried another. 

“News — I should rather think that is news!” 
declared a third. 

“ Who’s the girl ?” asked a fourth. 

“ Is she pretty ?” demanded the fifth one. 

“Pretty,” echoed Driver; “yes, she’s pretty. 
It goes without saying. You don’t suppose Ned 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


45 


Smith would choose a wife who wasn’t at least 
pretty, do you ?” 

“Men don’t invariably choose their wives out in 
this delectable country, my dear boy,” laughed 
Hills. “But I suppose we are to infer from your 
remark that Ned’s young woman is pretty, and 
nothing else ?” 

“ She’s not rich,” Driver answered ; “ in fact, I 
believe she hasn’t a penny to bless herself with. 
She was born and bred out here, and has never 
been home at all.” 

“And her father?” inquired one of his hearers. 

“ Oh ! her father, poor old chap, has just gone 
over to join the great majority, and missed by so 
doing a surgeon -general’s pension by only eigh- 
teen months, which is what I call the very rough- 
est of rough luck.” 

“ Oh ! — a surgeon-general — ah ! humph ! And 
she’s awfully pretty, eh ?” commented Hills. 
“ Fancy poor old Ned caught in that way. Poor 
old man ; that's the result of coming to India. I 
fancy I see him marrying just for the sake of a 
pretty face at home.” 

“And where is she living? How long has her 
father been dead? What’s her name?” broke in 
Vernon, impatiently. 


46 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“She’s staying with Mrs. Trevor, the Under- 
secretary’s wife,” Driver answered. “ Her father 
had a fit about a fortnight ago, and died straight- 
away, poor old chap. Smith announced the en- 
gagement as soon as the funeral was over, to Lady 
Lorrimor’s unutterable disgust.” 

“Lady Lorrimor!” cried all the loungers in a 
chorus and in tones of the most extreme astonish- 
ment, for they one and all knew her well ; “ and 
what had Lady Lorrimor to do with it ?” 

Driver Dallas laughed. 

“ Everything, I think, or fancied so, which 
amounts to the same thing where a woman is 
concerned. When the old man died, she came 
forward and generously offered, with the most 
gracefully pathetic weeps, to give the girl a home. 
Talked of sisterly affection, and said she felt as a 
sister to her, beiug a motherless girl herself. Oh, 
you fellows may laugh” — as a yell resounded 
through the barely furnished and lofty room — 
“ but it’s all true — as true as gospel ; Smith told 
me it all, word for word, himself. U nkind tongues 
in Simla — and they are many — said that the young 
lady has a marvellous talent in the millinery and 
dress - making line, and that her ladyship only 
meant getting a clever and companionable maid 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


47 


without paying any wages and allowing any per- 
quisites ; anyway, certain it is that as soon as she 
heard of the engagement to Ned Smith — who, by- 
the-bye, as you fellows probably all know, is one 
of the men whom Lady Lorrimor has not managed 
to subjugate — she rushed off to Mrs. Trevor’s bun- 
galow, where Smith was sitting with Mrs. Trevor 
and Miss Stewart, and there made a regular scene ; 
called Miss Stewart a designing hussy and a sur- 
reptitious cat, and after completely exhausting her 
whole vocabulary of abuse, wound up at last by 
declaring that Miss Stewart had been flirting with 
her husband, who was, she thanked an ever-watch- 
f ul and intervening Providence, above temptation, 
and above suspicion.” 

“ Eh ?” inquired Hills, looking up with a com- 
ical air of surprise. “Did you say Sir George?” 

“ Yes, Sir George ! Smith told me afterwards 
that he burst out laughing in her face — the whole 
story was so absurd. I suppose the real truth was 
she was simply savage at losing her maid in pros- 
pect, and equally savage, no doubt, at this simple 
young girl succeeding where she had failed.” 

“ And Miss Stewart is pretty, you say ?” Yernon 
remarked. 

“Oh! uncommonly — wonderfully pretty, in 


48 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


fact; like a violet or a primrose, you know': sweet 
and fresh and all that.” 

“ And like — ” 

“Well, she’s not very tall, but is lissom and 
graceful, though very slightly built. Her hair is 
dark golden, and almost straight, and her eyes 
are blue, or rather violet, with extraordinarily long 
lashes of a nice brown color, rather dark. Alto- 
gether she’s quite the prettiest girl in Simla, 
though to be sure that’s not saying as much as 
might be said for her, considering all the yellow- 
faced hags one sees grinning and grimacing up 
and down the place from morning till night.” 

“ Old Driver don’t seem to appreciate India very 
well. Somehow or other everything’s wrong that’s 
in it !” laughed Hills to Damian, who was lying 
back in his big chair, chuckling weakly to himself. 
“ Peg Lorrimor — ” he gasped out at last ; “ only 
to think of old Peg doing the virtuous matron, 
filled with virtuous indignation at the sheep’s eyes 
cast at her dear old K.C.B. of a spouse — seventy 
odd. Heavens ! what a joke to send home to my 
people the next time I write !” 

“ Oh ! they know her ?” 

“ Peg Lorrimor ? Rather ! Yes, she’s a sort of 
cousin of mine, three or four times removed,” the 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


49 


lad answered. “ Yes, we all know her— only too 
well ; and my mother loves her.” 

“ I can quite believe it,” declared Yernon, with 
great gravity. 

“A fellow was once frantically in love with 
Peg — ” the lad went on. 

“You don’t say so! Was it long ago?” Hills 
inquired. 

“ A good long time ago — yes. It was just about 
the time she was married. I remember she was 
staying with us, and Sir George often used to ride 
down from town — for my people live at Putney, 
you know. I remember one night, or rather late 
one afternoon, we were all in the garden — my 
four sisters, I, Peg, and Peg’s forsaken sweet- 
heart, who was well on to seven feet high and 
handsome ; his face was his fortune, or he might 
have had Peg and welcome, poor chap. Well, Sir 
George came that afternoon — a little strapped- 
down, buckled-together, wizened beggar. He nod- 
ded all round in his own little, condescending, pat- 
ronizing way ; said ‘ How do ?’ to my sisters, kissed 
the fair and faithless Peg’s lily hand, patted me 
on the head — I was nine, and he was wearing a 
signet-ring that must have weighed quite a pound 
—•then looked up at big Jack Holland, said, in 
4 


50 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


his own little affable way, ‘ Well, and how are 
you, my boy?’ ‘My boy’ looked down at him in 
mighty scorn ; he never answered him, but he cast 
two contemptuous words to the four winds of 
heaven, which sent those of us who heard them 
off into fits.” 

“ And they were ?” asked Hills. 

“‘Old shrimp!’” returned young Damian, 
amid a yell of laughter. “ Give you my word 
of honor,” the lad continued, when he was able 
to make himself heard, “I never see old K.C.B. 
without a sort of suppressed volcano being set 
a-seething and a-bubbling in my interior.” 

“He is like a shrimp,” put in Yernon, still 
laughing at the youngster’s story. 

“ Or a dried white currant,” suggested Driver 
Dallas. 

“ Good deal more like a sour crab-apple,” de- 
clared Hills ; “ and small wonder, with ‘ my lady ’ 
constantly on his hands — saving your presence, of 
course, Damian ; only it’s really no use apologizing 
for the things I have said, is it? Faith ! I hadn’t 
the smallest idea she was kith or kin of yours — not 
the very smallest.” 

“ Kith or kin of mine ! If my mother could 
only hear you !” chuckled the lad. “Kith or kin — 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


51 


oh dear ! — ‘ No relation of mine? she always says ; 
‘ merely a connection, and a very distant one, of 
your poor father’s.’ The only time my mother 
ever applies that adjective to my governor is when 
she happens to be alluding to Peg Lorrimor; but 
it invariably comes into use on such occasions — 
in-variably.” 

“ And what got the man who was once in love 
with her?” asked Yernon. 

“Jack Holland? Oh, poor, dear old Jack — he 
went out to Coomassie, and died of some beastly 
African fever as soon as he landed. Poor, dear 
old Jack ! He was a fine fellow*, and no mis- 
take.” 

“And was ‘gone’ on Lady Lorrimor! What 
an odd thing it is that the best fellows always 
seem to suffer from some such obliquity of vision !” 
observed Hills, sen tentiously. “Well, then, Dri- 
ver, is that all the news you brought back from 
Simla?” 

“ Yes, I think that’s about all,” returned Driver, 
after mature deliberation. 

“Driver thinks that’s about all,” put in young 
Damian, with a laugh. “Well, if I know any- 
thing of human nature or of Driver, there is a 
very much bigger piece of news behind it than 


52 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


even the announcement of Ned Smith’s mar- 
riage ?” 

“ What is it, Driver ?” 

“ Oh, I don’t know. Ask Limps there,” point- 
ing to Damian ; “ he seems to know all about it.” 

“ Come, out with it !” Hills persisted. 

“Well, I really haven’t any other news to tell,” 
answered Driver, thus hardly pressed, “except 
that I’m thinking of going home.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


53 


CHAPTER VI. 

It would be hard to say whether the Royal 
Horse were the most astonished or disgusted at 
Driver Dallas’s second piece of news. They had 
never expected for one moment that there was 
the slightest chance, for several years, of his being 
lost to the regiment, of which he was so distin- 
guished an ornament and so popular an officer. 

He had, up to the time of the long leave which 
he had spent at Simla, seemed so thoroughly satis- 
fied with his new surroundings ; had chaffed ev- 
erybody he met, and made game of everything he 
saw, with solid and imperturbable good -humor; 
had planned shooting expeditions for three years 
to come — tigers first ; then a trip in quest of sable- 
skins in Cashmere; then a little tour into Nepaul 
— and had discussed the details thereof with zest 
and ardor, with all the eagerness of your true 
sportsman, which Driver' Dallas undoubtedly was. 

And then for all this to end in a touch of fever 
necessitating a leave spent among the dissipations 
which have their round among the cool heights of 


54 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


Simla ; and for Simla to end in a fit of disgust, or 
of homesickness, or both, and for Driver Dallas 
to throw over the Royal Horse by exchange with 
De Carteret-Carey, of the Scarlet Lancers, was sim- 
ply a state of affairs too unheard of and too intol- 
erable for any regiment to swallow, save with a 
sensation of disgust as profound ^as by any possi- 
bility could enter into and dwell in the heart of 
mortal man. 

However, Driver seemed to have made up his 
mind, having returned to Dwalipore with every 
arrangement for exchange with De Carteret-Carey 
settled beyond reconsideration. 

“I can’t imagine what on earth you’re thinking 
of, nor why you want to leave the old regiment,” 
Hills grumbled, irritably, that evening, when they 
were sitting out under the veranda after leaving 
mess. 

Driver’s pipe gleamed redly against the dark 
wall of the house — now waxing, now waning, now 
bright, now dull through the gloom of the Indian 
night as the smoker pulled at it. 

“ I didn’t want to leave it,” he answered, after 
a long pause. “ I hate leaving it, but I want to 
get home. I’ve been away long enough.” 

“ I thought you were going to stay three years 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


55 


out at least,” growled Hills ; “ and here you are 
sneaking off home again when you haven’t been 
one yet.” 

“ Yes, I know,” said Driver, meekly ; “ but, all 
the same, I want to get home, and, what’s more, I 
must get home, and that’s all about it.” 

“Ugh!” grunted Hills, in disgust. All at once 
he seemed to grasp the true reason of this change 
in his favorite comrade. “ Ugh ! Always the 
same. A man makes the most elaborate prepara- 
tions and plans both for business and pleasure, 
and then some chit of a girl comes along and 
sends them all flying to the four winds of heaven. 
You’re going to chuck everything up and go 
home ; but I tell you she’s not worth it, Driver^ 
she’s not worth it.” 

“Perhaps not,” returned the imperturbable 
Driver; “ but I mean to go, all the same.” 

“Yes — yes — of course, to be sure; it goes with- 
out saying. Ned Smith means to marry that lit- 
tle girl up at Simla. But whether the girl will 
ever repay poor old Ned for the sacrifice is quite 
another matter.” 

“ Time will show,” murmured Driver, placidly. 

“ Yes, true. Time will show ; and let me tell 
you, my friend, when time has shown you as many 


56 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


things as it has shown me, and when you have 
lived as long in the world as I have ” — Hills was 
thirty and one, to be particular as to detail — “ you 
will have a much better idea beforehand as to 
what time will or will not show you ; and where 
a woman is concerned, you will find that you’ll 
not be very far out of it when you predict that it 
will not show you much that’s worth seeing.” 

Driver Dallas gave a short laugh of amusement. 
“What a bitter old chap you are when you get 
talking about women,” he said; “you came a 
cropper over a bad one for certain ; but, bless yon, 
man, they’re not all bad because she was. It isn’t 
reason, and a sensible chap like you ought to be 
reasonable. Hang it all ! there are plenty of good 
women in the world, just as there are heaps of us 
army men who are anything but the roaring lions 
seeking whom we may devour, as the lady-novel- 
ists persist in making us out to be.” 

“Ah! wait till you come a cropper yourself,” 
growled Hills, with solemn warning. 

Driver Dallas laughed again. “ Yes ; but let a 
fellow have his day first, old man,” he said, in the 
mildest tone possible. 

There was a long silence after this ; perhaps be- 
cause Hills saw the force of the other’s argument. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


5? 


“And you’ve positively decided to go?” he 
asked, breaking it. 

“ Yes, positively. Well, I’m off to roost now,” 
knocking his pipe out against one of the supports 
of the verauda; “good-night.” 

“ Good-night,” returned Hills, gloomily. 

He, too, knocked the ashes out of his pipe, but, 
unlike Driver, he filled it and set it alight once 
more. 

As for Driver, he went straight to bed and 
dreamed — dreamed of a pair of wonderful sap- 
phire-colored eyes, framed in fringes dark as night ; 
of a little proudly borne head, bound with great 
ropes and coils of dusky hair; of a sweet arch 
mouth, and even, pearly teeth; of a sweeter coax- 
ing voice, which called through his dream, “Driv- 
er! Driver! I want you!” 

“I want you!” Was it any wonder that he 
must needs, reason or none, go home ? Was it any 
wonder that Hills’s caustic and sweeping condem- 
nations of women in general, and in particular of 
the one who had proved a lodestar of attraction, 
sufficiently powerful to draw him from one side of 
the world to the other, had just about as damaging 
effect on Driver’s faithful heart as the proverbial 
water has upon the proverbial duck’s back ? Scarce- 


58 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


ly! Anyway, he bore the universal expressions 
of regret without any feeling or appearance of be- 
ing puffed up by them ; though, in truth, he was 
heartily sorry to leave the old regiment, and very 
proud that the old regiment was so sorry to lose 
him, and continued his preparations for his jour- 
ney to the tune chiefly of Hills’s cynical and grum- 
bling remarks. 

First of all, his belongings, such as he did not 
want to carry with him, were advertised for sale 
in the newspapers of the district, in paragraphs 
which bore, as is the custom in the shining East, 
two pathetic words at their head — 

“ Going Home.” 

He ordered a piece of plate up from Calcutta 
for presentation to the mess, wherewith to keep 
his memory green ; and for its subject he chose a 
little model of himself, some eight inches high, 
clad in the full-dress uniform of the regiment, with 
one gauntleted hand on hip, and the other holding 
a staff supporting a wide open tazza for fruit, 
while round the base ran, in old English characters, 
this inscription : 

“Driver Dallas was once one of us. Fate caused him to 
sever the bonds which bound him to us; but he left his sol- 
dier’s heart with the Royal Horse.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


59 


CHAPTER TO 

“Driver Dallas was once one of us. Fate caused him to 
sever the bonds which bound him to us; but he left his sol- 
dier’s heart with the Royal Horse.” 

It was some time after he had become but a 
memory of the days that were no more to such of 
his comrades as remained in the Royal Horse that 
the inscription, which of design had been cut very 
deeply, and so quaintly as to be almost undecipher- 
able, was made out after dinner one night by a 
guest well up in old English characters. 

Hills, who was sitting close by, gave a disgusted 
sneer. 

“ For ‘ fate ’ read * a miserable, mischief-making, 
fickle, flouting thing which we call a woman,’ ” he 
muttered to Vernon, who sat beside him. 

“Poor old Driver Dallas!” returned Vernon; 
and then all at once became conscious that there 
was a very feminine and suspiciously womanly ap- 
pearance of moisture about the other’s keen, cold, 
clear eyes. “Poor old Driver Dallas!” he said 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


again, and turned to the man upon his other hand, 
leaving Hills to himself. 

Well, in addition to the fruit tazza for the 
officers, he gave a pair of gorgeous candlesticks 
to that of the sergeants, and also found time to 
send down an order for the chief jeweller of the 
native bazaar to come up to the bungalow with 
the best assortment he possessed of native jew- 
ellery. From him he bought many and varied 
gewgaws for the adornment of the sex described 
by Hills as “miserable, mischief- making, fickle, 
flouting things” — fans and bangles and necklets, 
earrings and pendants and chains ; some wrought 
in finest filigree, others of massive Decca work, 
but all beautiful in their degree, and of their kind 
the very best. 

And then there was a big dinner, on which fol- 
lowed a big night ; in its turn followed by a part- 
ing, which was a wrench all round — a wrench 
which almost made Driver repent himself of those 
two words at the head of the newspaper para- 
graphs — 

“ Going Home.” 

However, long before he sighted the ships in 
the harbor of Bombay, the old influences were 
strongly at work in him again, and the ties which 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


61 


had bound him to the Royal Horse seemed but as 
ropes of sand in comparison with the memory of 
a pair of darkly set blue eyes on the other side of 
the world. 

Cynical Hills would have declared that such an 
influence was indeed marvellous, even endowed 
with a touch of the supernatural, or, as he would 
have put it, “ the uncanny,” but, in reality, it was 
not so — nothing of the kind ; it was just the dif- 
ference between two genders — the masculine and 
the feminine ; and, as a matter of course, the mas- 
culine was altogether out of it. It is the way the 
world goes round. If it were not so, I doubt me 
the old roundabout would very soon stick fast — a 
state of things which would be inconvenient and 
painfully unexciting; even the “Hills” of society 
would have no pet subject to sneer at. 

Somehow, I always feel so sorry, so profoundly 
sorry, so full of genuine commiseration for those 
unfortunates among us who make a parade of de- 
spising one another — the strong-minded ladies who 
want to get into Parliament, bless them, and pro- 
fess not to mind our sitting still in a crowded train 
or assembly while they remain standing for want 
of a seat, which we should give them if they did 
not scorn to admit themselves of the weaker sex 


62 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


— those ladies who hold advanced views, so ad- 
vanced in religion, politics, and most other sub- 
jects that the pretty souls have long ago got hope- 
lessly mixed, beyond all chance of ever being tidily 
sorted again — who look upon marriage (with a 
selfish brute of a man, you know) as a mistake, 
and upon babies as a special grievance planted upon 
down-trodden woman, which should have fallen to 
our share. 

Pretty souls! Such an one always makes me 
think of a quaint little incident which happened 
many and many a year ago at a wedding in the 
most countrified of country places. 

One of those same pretty souls was among the 
company, and was loud in declaring that poor girls 
were very, very foolish to be beguiled into the 
holy state; declaring, with a toss of her head, that 
nothing ever would induce her (and, by-the-bye, 
she was more than a shade over forty) to become 
any man’s slave. 

“ There’s no slave,” cried she, “ whose lot is so 
hard as a white slave that wears a wedding-ring, 
and so I’ve heard some great man say.” 

And then one of us brutes put his foot in it — a 
burly old bachelor given to farming and broad 
jokes: the more personal the better — who spoke 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


63 


out in tones loud enough to be heard by all : “Eh ! 
Miss Mary,” said he, “ but I’d be loath to ask you 
if 1 didn’t want you.” 

And I doubt me the old man had not set his 
foot so very far wide of his mark ! 

All the same, there is a good deal to be said on 
the other side of the question — not a little con- 
cerning such men as cynical Hills, who make one 
think of the ostrich, that foolish bird which buries 
its head in a thicket, and fancies that the world 
cannot see its big, blundering body. Foolish thing, 
and still more foolish man, who ought to know 
better than so transparently to let out to the quiz- 
zing, prying, jeering world the exact quality of his 
grain and the precise measure of his bushel — the 
man who rails, in season and out of season, against 
the sex of the mother who bore him. 

Nor can one think much other of him who keeps 
silence, yet persistently shuns all contact with the 
sex feminine and lovely ! It is to almost a cer- 
tainty that some time or other in the days gone by 
he has happened to find out — as we all do sooner 
or later — that velvet paws are capable of hiding 
steel claws, and that steel claws, given sufficient 
provocation, are able to scratch deep and deadly. 

Ay, true — true enough ! There is doubtless a 


64 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


touch, more or less marked, in every feminine 
character of the tiger-cat, as there is a likeness to 
the king of beasts in us ! But, then, is it not true 
that the heavy paw of the king of beasts comes 
down as often as not with a force and a reckless- 
ness as crushing as it is cruel ? Is it not true that 
the hand of man very, very often comes down with 
reckless brutality upon weak woman, crushing life, 
honor, purity, ay, her very soul, out of her? True 
enough — true enough! Then, would it be well 
for all women to cry, “ Out with them ! Out with 
them !” upon all men because some are callous and 
hard and brutal? Just as wise as for all men to 
shun all women because some are treacherous and 
fickle. There are lions and there are tiger-cats, 
but the balance is pretty evenly kept between 
them : man is not all lion ; woman is not all tiger- 
cat. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


65 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Driver Dallas left Bombay for home with the 
good ship Strathmore; but although the company 
aboard was of the pleasantest, the captain all that 
could be desired, the weather brilliantly fine for 
the most part, and all minor details, such as board 
and lodging and the like, beyond reproach, he did 
not come through the Strait, but deserted her 
that he might get home a week earlier by way of 
Brindisi. Neither by day nor night did he stop 
until he found himself in London close upon mid- 
night. Then, indeed, he went to Long’s, and in- 
dulged in a good night’s rest, waking in the morn- 
ing with a blissful feeling that the blue eyes he 
had come so many thousands of miles over land 
and sea to seek were close at hand now, and would 
meet his before the dusk of the day had fallen. 

He was not in a desperate hurry. He ate his 
breakfast with relish, and glanced over the morn- 
ing papers as leisurely as if he was only up from 
Aldershot on a two days’ leave, instead of having 
just arrived from India and being on his way to 


66 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


see his sweetheart. But how good it was to be 
home again ! How crisp and stiff the papers were, 
and what a musical crackle they made as he turned 
them over ! so different from the limp, aged-look- 
ing, flabby sheets from which he had been glean- 
ing news for nearly a year past. He turned them 
over more than once, just for the pleasure of hear- 
ing them rustle. 

After he had fully exhausted this amusement, 
he sallied forth into Bond Street, where he had 
his hair cut, and laid in a stock of scents and hair- 
washes and other requisites for the toilet of a gen- 
tleman who prided himself on being the cleanest 
and best-groomed man in his regiment, or, for the 
matter of that, out of it. Then he provided him- 
self with tobacco, and then he went into Hancock’s 
and bought a diamond ring, which he slipped into 
his waistcoat-pocket, so that it might be ready in 
case of emergencies. 

But oh! how good it is to come back to the 
throbbing heart of the world after a year of exile ! 
How delightful the energetic, jostling manners of 
the London streets, the noise and bustle of the rail- 
way- stations, the running of the train over the 
well-kept roads, the sweet, familiar aspect of every 
hedge and ditch, every field and covert, every 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


67 


house and tall -spired church, as he drew near 
home ! Oh, how good it was to be nearing home ! 

And then when the train slackened speed and 
drew up at his own station, there were a dozen 
smiling faces upon the platform — a welcoming 
group, from out of which hers shone like a brill- 
iant beacon-light. 

How good it all was ! He sprang out of the 
train and was caught in Miss Aurora’s arms. 

“ My dear, dear boy, a thousand welcomes home. 
Thank Heaven, you have come back safe and 
sound!” she cried ; and then she let him go, that 
Betty and Mab might do their share towards the 
welcome, and wiped her faded blue eyes of the 
joy-mist which clouded them. 

“Dear, dear Jack !” cried Betty, her lips quiver- 
ing and her lashes wet. 

“Dear old Driver!” murmured Mab as he 
kissed her. 

Perhaps if he had only been coming home on 
leave from a British station he would have been 
afraid of offending her by such a greeting; but he 
was just back from India, and though a year of 
absence is not very long, and one thinks nothing of 
it if it has been passed at home, yet when one has 
travelled half the world over, meeting and greet- 


68 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


ing acquire quite a different aspect. And Driver 
Dallas took the full advantage of this when he and 
Mab Rivers met again. 

And then there were others to be seen and no- 
ticed : the station-master ; an antiquated porter, 
who suffered from rheumatism and one arm ; and 
a long hobbledehoy, who was learning his work 
about the station, who knew the young captain — 
as he, in common with many others in the village, 
were accustomed to call the squire — well, and 
grinned a welcome with such right good-will that 
his already fine and open countenance expanded it- 
self to such an extent as to threaten going right 
round the back of his head. 

Driver — or the squire, as they called him — had 
to speak to these, and when he passed through the 
little wooden gate which divided the platform 
from the road, he found the brake, with the old 
coachman and the two grooms, who had come to 
meet him. They raised a simultaneous chorus of 
“Glad to see you ’ome again, sir;” and while he 
shook the old coachman’s hand, the two grooms 
fought valiantly for the honor of carrying his be- 
longings, of which he had not very many, the bulk 
of his baggage being still on board the /Strathmore. 

“ My dear boy,” said Miss Aurora, in horror, “ is 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


69 


that all you have brought back of the mountain 
you took away with you ?” 

“ Certainly not, auntie,” he answered, with a 
laugh ; “ I left the rest on board the P. and O. 
steamer. I only brought what I had in my cabin. 
I’ve got no end of Indian things for all three of 
you — claws by the dozen ” (with a look at Mab), 
“though I never had a chance of potting a tiger. 
I say, what a jolly day, and how lovely the coun- 
try looks after that dried-up, arid desert they call 
Hindostan ; it’s all so green and luscious-looking 
— you can’t think how different. By-the-bye, Bet- 
ty,” he ended, scanning his sister’s fair face keenly, 
“ how very pale you are ! Have you been ill ?” 

This remark had the effect of making Betty 
turn a vivid crimson hue from chin to brow, and 
he saw that a very scornful, unpleasant expression 
passed rapidly over Mab’s brilliant face as his sis- 
ter stammered a halting kind of denial. Miss Au- 
rora, however, made haste to answer. 

“ Ho, my dear, Betty is not at all well. Has not 
been well for weeks. In vain I have begged and 
prayed these headstrong girls to let us leave Drive 
for a time and seek the sea; but, as I say, in vain. 
Drive is perfect; Drive is lovely; and at Drive 
they will stop, reason or none. Meantime, Betty 


70 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


gets paler and paler, thinner and thinner, more 
listless and more listless, while Mab there backs 
her up in all her obstinacy.” 

“ Betty does not want to go away, auntie pet,” 
said Mab, thus attacked. 

“ I know she does not, but it would be better 
for her if she did,” retorted Miss Aurora. “ How- 
ever, now that our dear boy has come back to us — 
I hope with a good long leave before you, my dear 
— perhaps she will prove less hard to move.” 

“Yes, I’ve got a little leave,” answered Driver; 
“ a fortnight, that is.” 

“ A fortnight 1” cried Miss Aurora, in disgust 
and astonishment. “ Why, I thought when men 
came back from India — from /n-diah — that they 
in - variably had three months’ leave straight 
away.” 

“Yes; but I had a good deal of leave in India, 
you know, auntie,” Driver explained. 

“ But what has that to do with England ?” de- 
manded Miss Aurora, illogically, as was her habit. 

“Nothing at all,” he laughed; “but unfortu- 
nately it has everything to do with me.” 

And then he leaned back and looked past the 
coachman’s box at the gates of Drive, which they 
were rapidly approaching. “ By Jove 1” he ex- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


71 


claimed, “it’s a lovely old place! People out 
there rave about Simla; but I’ve seen nothing in 
India, or out of it, to compare with Drive for one 
moment: nothing that’s a patch upon it.” And 
suddenly changing his tone as the carriage Uirned 
in at the gates, and the lawn in front of the house 
became visible — “ and who the — at least I mean 
who is this ?” 

Miss Aurora turned her head in the direction 
which Driver’s look indicated, as also did Betty 
and Mab. 

“ Oh ! that , my dear, is one of your new broth- 
er-officers, Captain Ffolliott, of the Scarlet Lan- 
cers. Since they have been at Amplehurst he has 
often come over about this time.” 

“And how did you come to know him?” Driv- 
er asked, looking at his aunt, and then suddenly 
becoming aware that Betty had grown as red as 
fire, and then as pale as death. 

“We met him in town last spring, my dear,” 
Miss Aurora replied, in a tone which conveyed to 
Driver that she considered that circumstance not 
a particularly lucky one. “ I dare say he is very 
nice. He has a specious, plausible manner,” she 
continued, in meditative accents of consideration, 
as if she was carefully weighing the verdict for or 


72 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


against Captain Ffolliott, and found it had a de- 
cided leaning against him, though she was anxious 
to weigh fair and true; “and some people might 
call him good-looking,” she ended, as the horses 
pulled up with a jerk at the principal entrance. 

As Driver Dallas dropped off the step on to 
the gravelled drive, Captain Ffolliott, who was 
standing on the broad door-step, “ looking, hang 
him !” as Driver said to himself, with sudden in- 
stinctive dislike and detestation, such as he had 
never known before to spring up in his breast at 
first sight as it had done for this man — “as much 
at home as if the place belonged to him,” lifted 
his hat to the ladies with the air of being a very 
familiar friend indeed. 

“ Good-morning, Miss Aurora!” was his greeting. 

“ Miss Aurora, indeed !” thought Driver ; “ like 
his infernal cheek.” 

“ Good- morning, Captain Ffolliott! We did 
not expect to see you to-day,” returned Miss Au- 
rora, as tartly as ordinary politeness would allow. 

“Nor I; but — er — How d’you do, Dallas? 
Awfully pleased to meet you. But I happened to 
speak of your nephew’s expected arrival, so was 
commissioned to bring over an invitation to dine 
to-morrow evening.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


73 


As lie spoke he took a note out of his breast- 
pocket and handed it to Driver, who received it 
with a bow and a word of thanks. 

He, of course, knew what this elaborate expla- 
nation to Miss Aurora was worth — just nothing. 
He had caught a look in Mab Rivers’s lovely eyes 
which puzzled and disquieted him not a little; and 
now this Ffolliott had turned to speak to her, and 
she was standing smiling up at him with — “ Great 
Heaven!” thought poor Driver, “she never look- 
ed at me like that ” — which was very true. Mab 
never had, and, what was more, she never would. 

“You will come in and have some tea?” said 
Miss Aurora, stiffly, to the visitor. She was mind- 
ful of the old hospitable traditions of the house, 
but not for worlds would she have offered him any- 
thing likely to be more congenial to his taste than 
tea. 

“Just a cup of tea, thanks,” he answered, easily 
— apparently nothing abashed him or put him out 
of conceit with himself — “and then I will depart, 
for I am sure you must have much to talk of — 
much to hear and much to say.” 

“ Oh yes, naturally very much,” said Miss Au- 
rora, simply. 

In the face of a hint so broad as this, Captain 


74 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


Ffolliott had no choice but to take himself away 
as soon as he had disposed of the offered and ac- 
cepted cup of tea. Driver’s spirits rose as he saw 
him go, though Mab’s manner of saying farewell 
brought a frown to his pleasant, fair face. 

“What can either of them see in the fellow?” 
he said to himself ; then asked aloud, “ Has that 
fellow been long in the Scarlet Lancers? Surely 
not, for when I went over to Blankhampton for 
their ball he was not in the regiment then.” 

“ Oh no ; he has been but a very short time 
with them,” Miss Aurora answered. “ When we 
first met liiin he was in the line. And then he 
came in for money — a good deal of it apparently 
— and immediately exchanged into the Scarlet 
Lancers.” 

“ I see,” returned Driver. 

He did not further pursue the subject then, for 
neither of the girls seemed particularly willing to 
discuss the visitor, who had just departed. Betty 
gave Mab a look, and Mab dashed boldly into 
rapid conversation such as was best calculated to 
stop anything more Miss Aurora might have to 
say about Captain Ffolliott. 

“Oh! don’t let us waste precious time talking 
about Am,” she exclaimed, with an accent upon 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


75 


the personal pronoun such as the man whom it 
indicated might not have cared to hear, “ when 
there is so much that is really worth hearing.” 
And then she went off into a string of questions 
about India, and where Driver had been, whom 
he had seen, whether there were any alterations 
at Simla, whether such-and-such people had this 
villa, or others that cottage, if Miss So-and-so was 
married yet, or was still playing the young beauty 
of that most fascinating of hill stations, and so 
on, until Driver’s fears were allayed and soothed 
almost to sleep, lying torpid, if not actually dor- 
mant, until the following evening, when he and 
Ffolliott met again in the mess-room of his new 
regiment, the Scarlet Lancers. 

As a regiment it was very well known to Driver 
Dallas, who was as popular throughout the service at 
large as often falls to the lot of any one man to be. 

“I’m so aw -fully glad you’re coining to us, 
Dwriver,” Lucy said to him when they grasped 
hands. “The old wregiment’s not the same as 
it was when you knew it, so many fellows have 
left and others come — it’s altered aw-fully.” 

“Yes, so I’m told,” Driver answered. “I was 
more than sorry to leave the Royal Horse, but the 
fact was I could not stand any more of India.” 


76 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“Never saw the force of going to Indiali my* 
self,” murmured Lucy, with his placid drawl. 
“ Men go with an idea they are going to save 
money; they tell you the pay is doosid high 
and the living doosid small — you get a whole 
sheep for about fifteen shillings, I believe. Can’t 
see myself, if you have to buy a whole sheep just 
to get one leg of mutton, wheare the cheapness 
comes in. Seems to me you’ve got to spend 
just about five times as much money to live 
in comfort as here. No,” shaking his head, 
“ never saw the force of going to Indiali my- 
self.” 

“It’s a beastly hole!” said Driver, bluntly. 
“ Ah, here’s Miles. How d’you do, Miles ?” 

“ How are you, Driver?” heartily. “ By Jove ! 
I’m glad you’re coming to us. You’ll help to put 
the Scarlet Lancers back to something like their 
old form. We’ve been going downhill fast ever 
since Booties left it.” 

“ Holloa, Driver !” chimed in Preston, who had 
just entered. “Glad to see you. Glad you’re 
coming to us. How did you leave the Royals, 
eh? Like India ? No — I should think not ; nev- 
er heard of any one who did, except the wives of 
the regimental staff.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


77 


“ I hated it,” answered Driver. Then, in a tone 
of ice, said, “ Oh, how d’you do ?” 

“How d’you do?” It was Ffolliott who was 
thus addressed. “ Cold, isn’t it ?” 

“Very,” returned Driver, briefly. 

“I dare say you feel the cold a good deal after 
India.” 

“ I think it is cold,” said Driver, calmly. 

“Yes, I should think so. Are your ladies all 
well?” 

“ Quite well, thanks.” 

“I have seen a good deal of them since I’ve 
been quartered here,” Ffolliott continued. “ And 
Miss Aurora has always been particularly kind to 
me.” 

“I have no doubt of it. Miss Pinkerton is 
very good-natured,” Driver returned, as stiffly as 
ever Miss Aurora herself was capable of being. 
“ Lucy, do you know my aunt at all ?” 

“Not at all,” Lucy replied. ' “The Dwrive la- 
dies were pointed out to me one day in Ample- 
hurst, but I have — er — never met them. I hope 
you will introduce me before long.” 

“I shall be delighted,” said Driver, heartily, 
helping himself to sherry and bitters. 

Lucy looked at Miles, who lifted his eyebrows 


78 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


and grinned a reply. The look meant, “ How can 
the fellow stand such an all-around snubbing as 
this, and yet come up smiling at the end of it ?” 

And the lifted eyebrows and the grin meant a 
reply that for the very life and soul of him Miles 
could not make out, but that, however it was, he 
was not sorry to see it. 

However, the snub of snubs came an hour or 
so later, when Ffolliott, evidently determined to 
make the best of Driver Dallas’s want of sym- 
pathy and liking for him, suddenly addressed him 
by the fancy name by which he was chiefly known 
and hailed throughout the whole service. 

“ I say, Driver,” said he, “ did you ever happen 
to meet with Lady Lorrimor up in the hills?” 

Driver looked up quickly, a flash in his eyes 
and a crimson flush surging in one great wave of 
color across his face. 

“ Dallas, if you please,” he said, very quietly. 
“Yes, I met Lady Lorrimor at Simla. Do you 
know her ? Is she a friend of yours ?” 

“Oh yes; I’ve known her for years,” returned 
Ffolliott, apparently not noticing the first part of 
Driver’s answer. 

“ I don’t think he understood it,” said Miles in 
the sanctity of Lucy’s quarters several hours af- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


79 


terwards. “I was looking straight at him when 
old Driver let go that thunder-bolt, but the fellow 
never moved a muscle of his face — not the quiver 
of an eyelash betrayed him. In fact, 1 don’t be- 
lieve he heard it at all.” 

“ Oh yes, he did ; twrust that bwrnte to miss 
a word for or against,” answered Lucy. “ He was 
just helping himself to salt. He never moved a 
muscle of his face, but — he spilt the salt.” 

Meantime Driver Dallas was spinning along 
between the dark hedges which lined the road 
to Drive as fast as the four clean legs of a good 
roadster could take him. 

“I wonder,” said he, aloud — “I wonder why I 
hate that fellow so ?” 

“ Because,” his heart told him — “ because ‘ that 
fellow’ had dared to lift his eyes to brilliant 
Mab.” 

That was why, and a very good reason too. 


80 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


CHAPTER IX. 

“I think,” said Miss Rivers, decidedly, during 
the social breakfast the following morning, “ that 
you ought to give a lovely ball to celebrate your 
home-coming.” 

“ It’s not a bad idea,” observed Driver, thought- 
fully : he had just been proposing a large dinner- 
party as the best way of letting people know he 
had come home safe and sound again. 

“I should have the dinner-party, all the same,” 
Mab declared. “ The old gentlemen always turn 
so rusty if their interests are not looked after. 
But, then, have a real lovely dance, and have the 
band over.” 

“Oh! of course,” said Driver: that went with- 
out saying. 

“It will be simply delightful!” Mab cried. 
“ Betty, what shall we wear?” 

“ I don’t mind at all,” answered Betty, helping 
herself to marmalade. 

Driver looked up sharply ; this listlessness was 
something quite new in his sister, and he did not 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


81 


much like it. He was always in such dread and 
fear that something might go wrong for her. 

“ Got a headache, Betty ?” he asked, carelessly, 
or in what sounded a careless tone. 

“ No, dear,” with a slight start. 

Mab went on speaking of the ball-dresses. “ I 
suppose they ought to be white ; eh, Auntie-pet ?” 

“ Certainly, my dear ; white is indispensable for 
a first ball,” Miss Aurora answered. 

“Oh! it is your first ball,” said Driver. “No, 
surely not; don’t you remember what heaps of 
dances we went to two winters ago ?” 

“ Oh yes, dances ; but this is the first ball at 
Drive since your darling mother’s day,” Miss Au- 
rora broke in. “How well I remember the last 
one. She looked so fair and fresh and sweet, and 
the dear major so stalwart and so proud.” 

“And she wore white?” Betty asked, brighten- 
ing up, and looking like herself again. 

“All white — pure white,” answered Miss Au- 
rora, “ with sprays of stephanotis in the snowy 
lace of her bertha, and a great bouquet of stepha- 
notis and double gardenias. Oh ! you children 
must wear white for your first ball as daughters 
of the house.” 

“ I’ll give you flowers and fans for the event,” 

6 


82 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


said Driver ; “ and something to wear round your 
necks, if you’d like it.” 

“ Of course we should like it ; eh, Betty ?” Mab 
exclaimed. 

“ Of course,” echoed Betty, thus prompted. 

“ Your ideas, Driver, are exquisite, though your 
language is so hazy,” Mab rattled on. “ I know 
you will choose something perfectly lovely for 
us.” 

“ Something rather pretty, I hope,” said Dri- 
ver, modestly. 

Still he was somewhat worried by the change 
in his sister; and as the days wore on he became 
more and more impressed by the fact that she 
was changed. He was puzzled, because it was 
so slight, and yet so marked ; there was scarcely 
anything tangible for him to take hold of, and 
yet she gave him the idea of being, to a certain 
extent, crushed, and, without doubt, in trouble. 

He could not make it out at all. He was nei- 
ther very quick of wit nor of perception, and 
though he felt, somehow or other, as sure as a 
man could feel without any direct evidence on 
the subject, that Ffolliott had some baud in the 
matter, yet neither in her manner nor his, when 
they were together, was there anything which he 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


83 


could note as bearing witness to his conviction. 
He saw a good deal of them together during the 
days which elapsed between his return and the 
ball, three weeks later, for Ffolliott, as he soon 
found, was above taking offence, and blind alike 
to the most severe snubs and the most caustic 
sneers. Therefore, he came and went to Drive 
pretty much as he chose, regardless utterly of the 
fact that its master was profusely polite to him, 
and its mistress was as stiff as buckram. 

“ Only a beast of a grabby could stand it,” said 
Driver more than once to himself, when thinking 
over Ffolliott’s visits. 

But what did Ffolliott care for the snubs and 
sneers of a man who was unmistakably jealous of 
him, and the coldness of a little lady who wore 
a fuzzy “crop” and had the air of being flighty 
and even a little cracked? Simply nothing at all. 
Besides, even if he had cared, he would have gone 
through more than that for the sake of winning 
one smile from Mab Rivers’s brilliant eyes — one 
tremor from the beautiful arched and sensitive lips. 

And Captain D’Arcy Ffolliott did not find that 
he braved the snubs and the sneers in vain ; in 
fact, he did not often work in vain for the smiles 
and the favors of any woman. What did it mat- 


84 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


ter if Driver Dallas invariably addressed him as 
“ er — Ffolliott,” when she who was the delight of 
his stupid, blundering, honest soul, and the desire 
of his life, flushed up with joy and pleasure at 
his coming, and let the sweet, smiling lips down- 
droop when he took her hand in farewell? No 
wonder, he told himself, that Driver hated him ! 
It would be unnatural if he did not. And as for 
the old cat — yes, in the safe retreat of his own 
manly bosom Ffolliott dubbed Miss Aurora thus 
— it was easy to see that she would rather Dallas 
married Miss Rivers than any other woman in the 
world, since such a course would give her free 
quarters at Drive as long as she lived. 

He did not know that Miss Aurora was a rich 
old lady, who had given up a lovely little house in 
Park Lane to come and be the salvation of Major 
Dallas’s children ; but if he had known it he 
would have made the same excuse, or rather rea- 
son, serve. Of course he was sufficiently gener- 
ous to admit that it must be very aggravating for 
Dallas, who had doubtless been trying his level 
best for years past to secure the beautiful and 
brilliant Miss Rivers for himself, to see her so ut- 
terly give herself away to another, as she had 
done to him. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


85 


True, Dallas was only a very ordinary-looking 
man, while he, Ffolliott, was as handsome as a 
Greek god, with a pair of turquoise-colored eyes, 
soft and melting (and false, Hills would have add- 
ed) as a woman’s. 

He certainly was an exceptionally handsome 
man, as even Driver owned. He was lithe and 
long of limb, with very broad shoulders (Ameri- 
can shoulders, the tailors call them) and a hand- 
some, hawk -like cast of face. His hair, which 
looked odd in a man, was of the most brilliant 
auburn, and curled closely all over his head like 
a study from the antique; and he had a bland, 
urbane, ingratiating manner, such as, being com- 
bined with his handsome melting eyes, made him 
almost irresistible to the majority of the fair sex. 

Driver fairly hated him. For the life of him 
he could not see where his great attractiveness 
lay, nor in what it consisted. 

“ Ferrety-looking beast !” he muttered one day, 
as he watched the lithe, gray-clad form disappear- 
ing down the avenue, and pass out of sight among 
the shrubs which lined it ; then asked aloud, “ Do 
you girls like that fellow loafiDg about here ?” 

Betty looked up at Mab in evident distress for 
an answer, which Mab made readily enough. 


86 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“ My dear Driver, of course we do,” she said, 
emphatically. “He is the handsomest man in 
the service; and what girls would not like hav- 
ing the handsomest man in the service to be what 
you elegantly call loafing about them ?” 

Driver gave a disgusted grunt. “Can’t tell 
what you can see in him,” he growled. “ I call 
him an out and out — ” But there he broke off 
short, remembering just in time that if Mab real- 
ly liked the fellow she would not care to hear 
him abused. 

“What?” asked Mab, innocently. 

“Oh! nothing — nothing. If you like having 
the fellow here, that’s enough,” he said, shortly. 

He said no more about Ffolliott, but he did, a 
day or two afterwards, carefully sound Miss Au- 
rora as to the change in Betty. 

“ I say, Auntie,” he began one morning when 
they were together in her little sitting-room, “ I 
don’t think Betty looks any better.” 

“Nor I,” answered Miss Aurora. 

“ What do you think it is ?” 

“ Want of change,” was her reply. 

“We must persuade her to have change, then,” 
he said, with decision. “ We must see, as soon as 
this ball is over, what can be done ; we could not 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


87 


hope to get her away before it; though, all the 
same, I don’t think she’s particularly keen about 
it.” 

“Betty never appears particularly keen about 
anything when you see her in comparison with 
Mab, who is all fire and vivacity. I do wish,” the 
old lady went on, “ that Mab was not so taken up 
with that Captain Ffolliott. I cannot endure the 
man. I don’t like to think he is a brother-officer 
of yours.” 

“Nor I,” with a great assumption of careless- 
ness. “Then you really think Mab is taken with 
him?” 

“ Oh, my dear, there is no mistaking it,” the 
little old lady said, positively — “no mistaking it. 
When we first knew him I thought he was rather 
pleasant, though I was not too civil to him, you 
understand. I felt it my duty to be circumspect, 
having the care of two young and beautiful girls. 
But it was very strange — at first Mab seemed to 
dislike him extremely; and then, when he came 
over here to call, and told us he had exchanged 
into the Scarlet Lancers, Mab seemed to turn 
round all at once, and made herself most unneces- 
sarily agreeable to him.” 

“ And Betty ?” Driver asked, anxiously. 


88 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“ Oh ! Betty, you know, is never very demon- 
strative. I think, if anything, she was less pleased 
to see him than I was. But when I ask her she 
always gives me the same answer — ‘Oh! he’s 
very nice, don’t you think ?’ and as I don’t think 
so, we don’t very often speak of him at all. Still, 
I don’t like the man.” 

“ Neither do I,” answered poor Driver, with em- 
phasis. 

He was a very brave man, this Driver; blest 
with the truest and noblest kind of heroism — that 
which can endure and suffer in silence. It was 
plain, alas ! very plain to him, that during his self- 
sacrificing and well-meant absence one had come 
who would fain open the door of Mab’s cage ; his 
hand was already upon the latch, and the pretty 
bird within, instead of ruffling her feathers and 
showing fear of the intruder, came tamely — ay, 
even eagerly — to his call, and would accept the 
freedom gladly and willingly. 

He could not understand her taste, not admir- 
ing any complexion that was fair, whether flaxen 
or auburn ; but then he admitted that to most 
people — particularly women — Ffolliott would be 
considered not only a handsome but a dangerous 
man. He did not like the man ; but then he 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


89 


knew his opinion was not a fair one, because it 
was not unbiassed; for was he not as strongly 
biassed as a man could possibly be ? 

No; it was as plain to be seen as the nose on 
old Cockolorurn’s face (old Cockolorum, be it 
known, was the regimental sergeant-major of the 
Scarlet Lancers, and a person very well known in 
army society) that Mab was attracted — ay, and 
more than merely attracted — by Ffolliott’s — yes, 
I must give poor Driver’s thoughts as they rose in 
his mind, and in the vulgar tongue — by Ffolliott’s 
greasy attentions; so of course if she meant to 
marry him she must do so. Driver could not stop 
it ; and even if he could it would avail him noth- 
ing, for if he could and did bring an insurmounta- 
ble barrier between them, that would bring Mab 
no nearer to him. Much as he was in love with 
her, Driver Dallas had no fancy for a wife who 
had given her heart to another. 


90 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


CHAPTER X. 

Driver Dallas was not the man to sit down 
and sulk witli fate. Having made up his mind 
that Mab was not for him, he set himself to enjoy 
life as much as he otherwise could ; by otherwise 
I mean without her. 

And he succeeded fairly well, all things con- 
sidered. 

It is true that he never got over the pain which 
seeing them together caused him. He had never 
in all his life before known such exquisite agony 
as he felt to see Ffolliott’s melting, turquoise- 
colored eyes looking down into Mab’s brilliant, 
dark-fringed, sapphire orbs. 

Once or twice he tried the experiment of steel- 
ing himself to bearing it, but after that, finding 
that his whole soul rose and sickened, and his heart 
seemed to turn to water within him, he gave it up, 
and went over to Drive on those days when he 
knew that Ffolliott was going elsewhere. 

So he managed well enough. Mab was always 
just the same — lovable and sisterly to him; and 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


91 


she never vexed him by any allusion to or appar- 
ent hankering after his — comrade; never looked 
past him to see if any one else — namely, Ffolliott 
— was coming; never seemed in any way dissat- 
isfied with his society, or to wish that Ffolliott 
rather than he was with her. 

Thus the days wore over. The great ball to wel- 
come the home-coming of the Squire of Drive was 
celebrated — the grandest private ball that had been 
given in the county for many a day. 

“ A great success,” said one of the county mag- 
nates to him, as the festive hours sped by. “ Could 
not have been greater. The next must be when 
you bring your wife home — eh ?” 

“ I’m afraid the young ladies will all have grown 
into grandmothers before then,” answered Driver, 
with a brave smile; “and I shall be too old to 
care whether the young ladies of that day enjoy 
themselves or not.” 

“ Oh ! nonsense, nonsense ; wait till Miss Right 
comes along,” said the old lord. 

“ I’ll be sure to secure her when she does,” said 
Driver, with a valiant effort to be gay and uncon- 
cerned. 

His effort succeeded too, for the old lord said 
to his lady in the privacy of their own apartment 


92 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


that night, or rather morning, “You ought to 
make a little more of Dallas, my lady ; he has had 
a let-down, which is just the time to show him a 
little kindness. Drive is one of the prettiest prop- 
erties in the county.” 

“ What makes you think he has had what you 
call a let-down?” demanded my lady, who, being the 
mother of many daughters, was interested directly. 

Forthwith my lord repeated his little pleasantry 
to Driver in the matter of the next grand ball at 
Drive, and Driver’s manner of receiving it. 

“And you know, my lady,” he wound up, 
“ when a good-looking, good-like fellow like Dallas 
takes to prophesying a life of celibacy for himself, 
you may be quite sure that it’s not very long since 
he has had a let-down.” 

“I’ll ask him to spend a few days with us next 
week,” said my lady, with decision. “ I am very 
sorry if he is in trouble of any kind. I had the 
most affectionate regard for his poor mother and 
the dear major” — which was quite true, for Mrs. 
Dallas had come to be the mistress of Drive at a 
time when my lady had not been very long mar- 
ried herself, and therefore regarded her as a de- 
cided acquisition rather than in the light of an in- 
terloper and a spoiler of other women’s chances. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


93 


But my lord perfectly understood, and my lady 
knew it, having intended him to do so, that the 
master of Drive was to be asked to Amplehurst 
Castle with a view to his finding consolation there 
and Drive a mistress. 

So Driver received an invitation to spend a few 
days at Amplehurst Castle, taking hunters with 
him ; and having accepted it, he went at the time 
appointed, and enjoyed himself very much, my 
lady being particularly kind to him. 

But Driver did not confide his trouble to that 
motherly bosom, although my lady talked to him 
tenderly of his sweet mother and the dear major. 
He hunted two out of the three days and shot the 
third ; he ate enormously healthy breakfasts, and 
apparently enjoyed his dinner as well as any other 
man at the table ; but though he paid my lady a 
great deal of deferential attention, he did not be- 
stow more of that precious commodity upon any 
of the many daughters of the house than common 
politeness and good-breeding demanded of him. 

“I think,” said my lady to her lord, after Driver 
had taken himself away, “that you are rather mis- 
taken in Mr. Dallas. He does not give me at all 
the idea of wearing the willow.” 

“Oh no, I dare say not — I dare say not. A 


94 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


Dallas of Drive would never go howling about the 
county telling everybody he’d had a throw the 
first day of the season. But I’m right enough, my 
lady ; he’d wiped his coat pretty clean, but I saw 
the traces of mud on his back. Oh ! I’m right 
enough, as I generally am.” 

My lady did not contradict him — it was one of 
his little fads. ... Oh yes, we lords of creation 
have our fads, plenty of them, never doubt it . . . 
that he was in possession of a larger amount of 
acumen than most of his fellows. My lady never 
found it worth her while to contradict him ; she 
made use of his fads too often. 

So Driver went back to his regiment, and, as 
regarded Drive, continued on the same weather- 
house plan with Ffolliott as lie had done before — 
one in, one out. 

Thus the gloomy days of winter passed over, 
and the festival of Christmas came and went — not 
a very gay one for Driver, for owing to mourning 
several of the best houses were closed ; and be- 
sides that he had not much heart to go in for 
such frivolities and festivities as he had the 
chance of. 

And then, just as the new year came in, the Scar- 
let Lancers got their orders for the Soudan, which 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


95 


cleared Driver’s brain of its cobwebs, and gave bim 
a new zest and interest in life. 

Their notice was very short, and they had their 
work all cut out to carry their orders into execu- 
tion. On the last day Driver went home to say 
good-by, and on the way thither met Ffolliott 
carrying back a face so set and white that his kind 
heart was melted with pity. 

“ Poor fellow !” he said to himself, as Ffolliott 
rode past, scarcely answering his nod by a look. 
“ Perhaps he’ll never come back any more — not 
alive, at least. Poor chap ! It’s hard enough for 
me to leave them as things are, but if I stood in 
his shoes, and she cared for me, I think I should 
go demented.” 

lie found it the hardest of hard wrenches, as it 
was, though his lips were sealed from giving Mab 
any more tender farewell than he gave to Betty 
and Miss Aurora. Betty wept and sobbed ; Miss 
Aurora, with suspicious sniffles, tried to be very 
brave, and talked of the glorious traditions of the 
old house ; bade Driver gather new laurels to deck 
the ancient name, and drew her breath in a chok- 
ing sob which broke poor Betty down again in a 
fresh burst of grief more bitter than any that had 
gone before. 


96 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


And Mab never moved through it all ; she seemed 
to be dumb, frozen, powerless. There were some 
little trifles that he wished to be attended to when 
he was gone — certain bills to pay, his dogs and 
horses to be cared for, some photographs to be re- 
ceived, and a certain number of them sent away. 
Mab did it all — received the bills, and a check to 
cover them, promised to take special care of both 
dogs and horses, to receive the photographs, and 
send them away to certain persons whom Driver 
named, whose addresses she carefully wrote down. 
Mab did all, for neither Betty nor Miss Aurora 
could have remembered an instruction or taken 
down an address at that moment, even if it had 
been to save their lives. But she did all with the 
same frozen air of misery ; and Driver, watching 
her, felt a fiercer yearning and hunger for her love 
than he knew how to bear. 

Yet what avail was it that he hungered and 
yearned? Ffolliott had carried away heart and 
soul ; it was only the poor suffering body that 
was left behind. So he bade her farewell, gently, 
and with reverence for her grief, never breathing 
a word of his own suffering or of his love ; for, 
as I have said, he possessed that real hero’s heart 
which could bear pain in silence. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


97 


Miss Aurora would fain have gone into Ample- 
liurst the following morning to see the very last 
of her dear boy, but Driver would have none of it. 

“For Heaven’s sake spare me that!” he cried, 
in such a voice of anguish that Miss Aurora was 
fairly appalled. 

It was the only outward sign of his inward mis- 
ery that escaped him, drawn forth by the dread 
of seeing her take the last farewell of the man 
who had supplanted him in her favor ! He had 
his way, and on the following morn none of his 
own people were among those who pressed to get 
the last touch of his hand. 

And yet, just at the last minute, he was pain- 
fully reminded of all he was leaving behind, for a 
wretched little slip of a girl, in the hardest situa- 
tion of all for a woman to bear a parting which 
may be forever, was clinging to the great door- 
post of the station entrance, while a great rough 
trooper murmured his last words in her ear. Driver 
did not know her as being on the strength, but 
then he had not been with the Scarlet Lancers 
long enough to learn every face. 

“Is that your wife, Jones?” he asked. 

“ Yes, sir,” the soldier answered. 

“ Is she on the strength ?” 

7 


98 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


The man shook his head — in his grief and de- 
spair unable to reply. 

“ Stay there — or stop, let this woman pass in,” 
said Driver. “ I’ll come back and speak to you 
presently.” 

“ It’ll be all right, my lass,” murmured the troop- 
er, tenderly. “ Mr. Dallas ’ll help you ; and if not, 
jes’ you go straight along to Ferrers’s Court to the 
capt’n ; he’ll not ’ave forgot me — I saved Miss 
Menon’s life once. The capt’n’s lady ’ll see to 
you — never fear.” 

But the poor little girl, who was not on the 
strength, had no need to go to Ferrers’s Court in 
search of “ the capt’n,” for a few minutes later 
Driver came to her, accompanied by his groom, 
who was to remain behind in charge of the horses 
at Drive. 

“ When I am gone,” he said, “drive this young 
woman — Mrs. Jones — home — to Drive, that is; 
and give this note to Miss Aurora at once. Do 
you understand ?” 

“ Quite, sir,” answered the groom, promptly. 

“ This lady — my aunt,” said Driver to the girl 
and her troubled husband, who, poor fellow, dur- 
ing the last few days had wished wildly, many and 
many a time, that he had left his Polly to go on 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


99 


wearing her neat house-maids’ caps and aprons in- 
stead of bringing all this trouble upon her, “ will 
provide altogether for your wife ; so say good-by 
to her and let her go.” 

And he had done all this — why? Because he 
fancied there was a look in the wide-open, dis- 
tressed blue eyes that reminded him of Mab; 
which, to say the least of it, was exceedingly lucky 
for Mrs. Jones. 

“ Eh ! but there’s been naught like ’im in the 
Scarlet Lancers since the capt’n left the ridgi- 
ment,” exclaimed poor Trooper Jones to his com- 
rades as he dashed the last tears from his eyes. 
Booties was still the “ capt’n ” to the majority of 
the ranks — a proof of how a man’s good deeds 
may live after him. 

Ah ! that is a very neat ’and well - turned sen- 
tence which says, 

“Men’s evil manners live in brass; 

Their virtues we write in water;” 

but it is not invariably true. Happily, no ; it is 
never in vain that men, set in the midst of many 
and great temptations, still wear “ the white flower 
of a blameless life.” 


100 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


CHAPTER XI. 

The Scarlet Lancers were in the very thick of 
it, and oh, good heavens ! what a scene it was ! a 
square of British troops and Bluejackets, with 
ranks well drawn together, and on every face a 
stern determination to do or die. In their midst 
camels and cacolets, medical stores, water, and am- 
munition, and, alas ! busy surgeons, with more 
work on their hands than they knew how to get 
through. 

On all hands the hissing whiz and the sickening 
ping . . . thud of bullets falling through the heavy 
cloud of stinging, suffocating gunpowder smoke ; 
on all sides shrieks and groans of wounded and 
dying men, grunting of weary and terrified camels, 
curses of fighting men at mongrel cartridges that, 
for the time, rendered Martini - Henry’s of less 
value as weapons of war than the old Bemington’s 
in the hands of the Mahdi’s soldiery, now but 
some three or four hundred yards away. 

This was the scene inside our square ; and with- 
out it, as it held its place upon the stormy upland, 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


101 


the enemy — ten or twelve thousand of them alto- 
gether against a weak square of but fourteen hun- 
dred fighting men — long lines of black fanatics to 
right and to left, who, with waving of fluttering 
banners, red, white, yellow, and green, with great 
hammering and banging of tom.- toms, with dis- 
cordant yellings of dervises and cries of “Allah! 
Allah !” — began to move slowly towards the square, 
then, apparently unharmed by the fire of our skir- 
mishers, broke into a run, and came over the roll- 
ing ground like a wave of the sea — a rush of spear 
and swords men. 

Ah, what a sight ! the wave of black faces, with 
white teeth glistening, and their brandished weap- 
ons flashing in the sunlight, came furiously down 
upon the British square ! There was a volley from 
the Martini - Henry’s, a faltering and a wavering 
as some hundreds of the Arabs bit the dust; and 
then there was an instant of inaction on either 
side, followed by a wild yell from the enemy, as 
they leaped over the bodies of their fallen com- 
rades, and charged straight down into the British 
ranks. . 

It was in the very thick of the melee which 
followed that Driver Dallas and Ffolliott found 
themselves shoulder to shoulder, both silent, quiet, 


102 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


stern, watchful, forming, with the mere handful of 
men who had kept with them when the square 
was broken, but a group against that horde of 
savages ; and it was then that Ffolliott, who had 
shown himself of the bravest all along, ran for- 
ward a step or two to the help of a skirmisher 
running in -hard pressed. A couple of Arabs 
were down upon him in a moment with sword 
and spear. Ffolliott, to put it tersely, disposed of 
one, and the other disposed of Ffolliott ; then the 
crack of a carbine from behind Dallas settled the 
account with the spearsman just in time to pre- 
vent his running that weapon through Ffolliott’s 
body. 

“By Jove, he’s down — hurt!” said Driver to 
himself, as he thrust his sword clean through a 
Mahdi shirt, and out at the other side. And then, 
in the brief second or so of time which came 
after, the devil, who always does his best to take 
the tide at the flood, stood by his ear and whis- 
pered, 

“ He’s done for — your rival! Let him lie.” 

He could scarcely be said to hesitate ; only as he 
shook his good sword free of the carrion which 
encumbered it, his very heart seemed to freeze 
within him. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


103 


“ Safely out of your road !” whispered the voice 
in his ear. 

“ Out of my road!” he thought, and then — oh, 
great Heaven be thanked for it ! — shook himself 
together again. 

“ Curse it !” he cried aloud ; then set his teeth 
hard, and ran to where Ffolliott was lying, face 
down, among the coarse and trampled grass. 

To use Driver’s own words in describing his 
exploit afterwards, “ It was most of anything like 
pulling a chestnut out of the fire with one’s fin- 
gers.” Nevertheless, he did do it; and when Ffol- 
liott’s turquoise-colored eyes opened once more upon 
the world, it was to find himself in safety within 
the square, with Driver Dallas bending over him. 

“It’s all right now, old chap,” was his roughly 
soothing remark; “that Arab devil got a bit of a 
cut at you, but they’ll get you back to the doctors 
now, and you’ll soon be all right again.” 

Ffolliott fairly stared at him in surprise and 
wonder. 

“ Why, Dallas,” he exclaimed, “did you get me 
out of that hell ?” 

“Yes, I was close to. you, you know,” in an al- 
most apologetic tone, as if Ffolliott might resent 
his interference as a liberty. 


104 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


“But — but 5 ’ — gasping painfully — “I thought 
you — you — hated me.” 

“ Hated you? Pooh ! We’re all brothers here, 
aren’t we ?” Driver answered, abruptly ; then, with 
all your true Briton’s horror of even the nearest 
approach to a scene, turned away without giving 
the other time to utter a single word of thanks. 

Nor did Ffolliott see much of Driver after- 
wards. Several times that day and during the 
night he came to his bedside to find out how he 
was getting on — which was not very well, for his 
wound was deep and dangerous: a nasty spear- 
thrust perilously near the lungs. 

Still, all through that long and weary night of 
pain and delirium Ffolliott was ever and again 
conscious of his preserver’s presence, and tried des- 
perately hard to find words to express his grate- 
fulness — a task his poor confused brain refused to 
carry out. And then when morning and sense 
came he found that Driver was already off and 
away with the fighting column. 

They did not meet again in that land of sand 
and thorns. Driver Dallas, being in superb health 
and of indomitable and stubborn pluck and cour- 
age, was kept well to the front, while Ffolliott, 
after nearly slipping the leash of life half a dozen 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


105 


times, was got to the coast with difficulty, through 
the many changes and modes of transit by which 
he reached the sea, and long before Driver came 
back to civilization was carried off to England, a 
worn and wan shadow, the very ghost of his for- 
mer self. 

At first — that is to say, during the long and 
monotonous days which followed the battle of 
Abu Rhe — he had felt that, whatever it cost him 
in the days to come, he could not go back to Eng- 
land and ask the girl whom Driver loved to be his 
wife. 

His feeling was real and genuine enough — while 
it lasted ; we have all had those warm and unself- 
ish sentiments at some part or other of our lives — 
feelings which seem to stir the heart to its lowest 
depths, to make it swell and soften, to possess it 
utterly. 

But they very seldom last. 

In Ffolliott’s case, by the time he had reached the 
Nile, he had suffered so much from feverish thirst 
and pain, from the sickening swing and sway of 
travelling on camel-back, from heat and dust and 
flies, he was so worn and weary and miserable, that 
he had almost forgotten how great a thing it was 
that Dallas had done for him in saving his life. 


106 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


He began to long to go home, and very soon af- 
ter that he began to long to see Mab ; after which 
— heigh-ho ! the wind and the rain ! — he never had 
any more of those fine and high-minded unselfish 
sentiments which had moved and stirred his heart 
as he lay wounded and sick unto death by the cool 
and clear waters of the Wells of Abu Rhe. 

By the time he reached England he was on the 
high-road to health again. True, he was a gaunt 
and ghastly-looking skeleton ; yet what was that 
to him? A mere nothing; having been so near 
death, Ffolliott thought nothing of it. 

Although he had many, one might almost say 
crowds, of relatives, all waiting more or less anx- 
iously for a sight of their hero, he went straight 
to the best hotel in Amplehurst : very naturally, 
for — as he was careful to explain to Miss Aurora, 
when he found himself at Drive, and made wel- 
come there because he owed his life to the master 
of the house — he wanted to see if his things were 
all right. 

“Oh! you left your belongings in Ample- 
hurst !” said Miss Aurora, in a tone of some sur- 
prise. “Well, I dare say they have a good deal 
of spare room in barracks, but my nephew sent 
everything he possessed home to us.” 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


107 


“ Yes ” — with a smile — “ Drive was convenient- 
ly near for him.” 

He did not think it necessary to inform Miss 
Aurora that not a stick or rag belonging to him — 
except what he had brought in his portmanteau — 
was at that moment within a hundred miles of 
them ; that was a detail. 

The stately three-chinned rector came in just 
then, and diverted Miss Aurora’s attention from 
him, leaving him free to go over to the deep win- 
dow where Mab was sitting. 

“ I want to speak to you alone for a moment,” 
he said, in a low voice ; “ I — I — have something 
important to say to you.” 

“Very well; come into the conservatory,” said 
Mab, readily. 

She led the way ; Miss Aurora, occupied with 
the rector, did not turn her head, and was uncon- 
scious of their movements. Ffolliott followed her 
until she reached the end of the long conservatory. 

“ Well, Captain Ffolliott ?” she said, inquiringly. 

Ffolliott, now that the time had come, somehow 
felt less valiant and less sure of himself than he 
had done all the way home from Egypt. 

“ You know what I want to ask you,” he began, 
awkwardly. 


108 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


Mab shook her head. 

“ How is that possible ?” 

“I — I — oh ! Miss Kivers — Mab !” — trying to take 
her hand — “don’t be hard on me — a poor fellow 
just out of — of — ” (here he stopped short and hes- 
itated for the right phrase) — “out of the jaws of 
death, don’t you know !” he ended at last. 

“Was I — hard on you?” asked Mab, with a 
smile which all at once made Captain Ffolliott 
feel something more than awkward. 

“ I think you were,” he said, feeling it best to 
come straight to the point, not seeing any way of 
retreat. “But I will speak plainly. Before I went 
to the Soudan I would have asked you to be my 
wife, had I not felt I might never come back 
again. But now I have come back, and I have 
come to ask you the same question.” 

He tried to take her hand again, and this time 
Mab did not refuse, but allowed him to clasp it 
full and fair before she spoke. 

“ Captain Ffolliott,” she said, very quietly, “you 
have spoken plainly ; I will do the same. Then, 
before I give you any answer to your very flatter- 
ing proposal, will you tell me if you remember 
first meeting us ?” 

“ Of course ! I could have fallen down ” — hold- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


109 


ing the hand very tight, and speaking in a glad, 
triumphant voice — “and kissed the very ground 
under your feet.” 

“ But instead,” supplemented Miss Rivers, in a 
tone which cut him like a knife, “you took the 
first opportunity of kissing my face without so 
much as going through the ceremony of asking 
my permission.” 

“ That was because — ” he began, eagerly. 

“ Because,” she broke in, “you thought Miss 
Dallas of Drive would be a very convenient and 
proper sort of wife for you, while Miss Rivers, the 
girl who had no money, would do very well for 
your amusement.” 

“ I came straight for you as soon as my circum- 
stances changed,” he began, humbly. 

“Yes, that is so — after you had tried every art 
to make Miss Dallas like you ; and do you remem- 
ber once how you boasted of it to me ? — and suc- 
ceeded.” 

Somehow the clasp of his fingers upon hers 
was loosened, but Mab did not withdraw her 
hand. 

“ And — you — thought,” she went on, with clear, 
slow, cutting emphasis — “you thought that I — 7, 
who owe all the happiness of every day of my life 


110 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


to these people, who are all — father, mother, broth- 
er, and sister — to me ; who stand between me and a 
whole world of such men as you are — you thought 
that I would lower myself, degrade myself, shame 
myself by taking stolen kisses, given on — the — sly, 
from my sister’s — ay, my more than sister’s — 
lover? You thought that I, the daughter of a 
man whose name might have stood as another 
word for honor, would take as a husband the man 
who had broken my best friend’s heart? You 
thought that of me?” 

Ffolliott let her hand go free, and it fell to her 
side. 

“I didn’t think anything of the sort,” he said, 
sullenly ; “ I thought of nothing except that I 
loved you. Of course I know I went for Betty — 
Miss Dallas, that is — when I was a poor beggar 
without a sixpence to bless myself with ; but af- 
terwards, when I had more than I wanted, and I 
— I met you again, it seemed so dishonest to pre- 
tend what I didn’t feel. And she did not seem to 
care at all (at least after the first few times I came 
to Drive), and you seemed so willing, so ready to 
lead me on — ” 

“ Of course I did,” put in Miss Rivers, prompt- 
ly. “ I was most willing, I assure you — most 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


Ill 


ready to avenge ray friend;” and then, with a 
grave bend of her pretty, dusky head, Miss Rivers 
turned and walked back through the long con- 
servatory to rejoin Miss Aurora and the stately 
three-chinned rector in the drawing-room. 


112 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


CHAPTER XII. 

Captain Ffolliott went back to his hotel at 
Amplehurst like one stunned; to all intents and 
purposes he was stunned. 

For he had never looked for such an end as 
this. He had thought at the last moment that 
she might not perhaps like him well enough, but 
he had never suspected that all along she had 
been merely playing a part — a part to deceive and 
to defraud — a part which not only made a fool, 
but actually a knave of him ! 

Oh! but it was a bitter pill for him to swallow; 
and, what was worst of all, it was a pill he had 
no chance of refusing. Ho, it had to be swal- 
lowed somehow, even though the bitter taste 
thereof should remain behind forever. 

And it was not until the Scarlet Lancers came 
home at the end of August that the bitterness 
wore off at all, and he began to feel less sore. 

In his mind he had gone over and over again 
through the whole affair, from beginning to end — 
over every detail of his acquaintance with the la- 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


113 


dies of Drive, and, as a matter of course, he had 
quite come to look upon himself as a person who 
had been exceedingly badly, treated. 

And then the Scarlet Lancers came home, and • 
marched with all the pride, pomp, and circum- 
stance of glorious war (yes, if you please, from 
the Soudan campaign of ’85) into their new quar- ■ 
ters in the Cavalry Barracks at Colchester, and at 
the very first sight of Driver Dallas’s face, D’Arcy 
Ffolliott’s heart changed, for he saw that the man 
who had saved his life carried a trouble heavier 
to bear than his own. 

Driver’s face fairly haunted him, while in his 
ears there rang a little string of words, repeating 
over and over again with dogged persistence, “ He 
saved your life at the risk of his own — you who 
were his rival — and he loves her /’’ 

If only lie could have thought of something — 
anything else; but he could not. Over and over 
again he heard those haunting words: “He saved 
your life — at the risk of his own — and he loves 
her /” 

Yes, it was true — true; Dallas had rushed into 
the very thickest of the fight to pull him back 
into safety — he who, wounded almost to the death, 
was lying face down among the coarse grass, and, 

8 


114 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


for aught Dallas knew, was already dead and be- 
yond help ; and now he had come back, wretched 
— more wretched in the land where she dwelt 
than he had been among the dangers and hard- 
ships of a campaign in a savage country. 

All the afternoon Ffolliott wandered aimlessly 
and miserably in and out of the different blocks 
of buildings lying within the barrack walls — from 
mess - room to stable, from stable to the various 
houses in which were the officers’ quarters, now 
all in confusion and disorder. 

Most of the officers’ belongings had been sent 
on to Colchester some days previous to the arrival 
of the regiment, and Driver, like all the others, 
was busily directing his servants in getting his 
rooms into something like order. Twice Ffolliott 
looked in and found only chaos, with poor Driver 
sitting on a big box in the middle of the larger 
room, like Patience on a monument. As the serv- 
ants were there he had not a chance of speaking, 
but when they went off to their tea he seized 
the opportunity and walked boldly in, feeling 
more as if he would like to take to his heels 
and run than ever he had done in all his life 
before. 

“ I say, Driver, can I come in ?” he asked. 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


115 


“ Yes, to be sure,” answered Driver, who was in 
a mortal fright lest Ffolliott should think it neces- 
sary to thank him for his share in that little busi- 
ness at Abu Rhe. 

Hearing that there was none of the old resent- 
ment in his tone — and you know it is impossible 
to feel very much out at elbows with a man to 
whom you have done the greatest of services, 
though, unfortunately for the honor of our weak 
humanity, the man to whom you do a great service 
generally takes the very first opportunity of prov- 
ing that in his opinion you were the gainer by the 
transaction, and of giving you a rub for yourself, 
just to show that he resents the obligation — and 
emboldened by the fact that this was the very first 
time since the night that Dallas had dined with 
his new regiment at Amplehurst that he had ever 
dared to call him “Driver,” and also that Driver 
had accepted the innovation without the comment 
even of a look, Ffolliott went on — 

“ You’re Miss Rivers’s guardian, aren’t you ?” he 
asked, abruptly. 

Driver nodded, too sick within himself to reply 
in words, for he thought that the supreme moment 
of knowing the worst had come upon him. But 
though he was silent, his soul rose and cried out 


116 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


passionately within him, “ Cannot I be left this 
one day in peace?” 

“ I went over to Drive as soon as I got back to 
England — ” Ffolliott went on. 

Driver blew a great cloud of smoke up into the 
air, and gave a sort of grunt, to show that he heard 
and comprehended. 

“And I — I asked her to marry me,” said Ffol- 
liott, in a shaking voice, though he forced himself 
to appear cool, and even indifferent about it. 

“ Ah !” said Driver, sending forth another cloud, 
though he could not see it, or anything else, be- 
cause of the blood-red mist which came dancing 
in front of his eyes. 

“And she — she refused me,” Ffolliott went on. 
Then, after an utter silence which lasted for a 
minute or more, added, “ I thought I’d better tell 
you. I — I thought you’d like to know about it — 
that’s all.” 

To Driver his voice sounded far away, like the 
sound of church bells through a heavy fog, or of a 
shout echoing down a long, long corridor ; and in 
truth he never quite knew whether he did not go 
very near, indeed, to a swoon when he grasped the 
full meaning of his comrade’s words, and under- 
stood why he had told him ; but when he came to 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


117 


his own senses he was still sitting on the big box, 
his pipe held fast between his teeth, and Ffolliott’s 
footsteps were echoing on the flag-stones of the 
hall below. 

“ Gad ! what it must have cost him to tell me !” 
he exclaimed, and he said it with an awe which 
was reverential. 

There is no Driver Dallas in the Scarlet Lancers 
now; but down in the old home there is a little 
Driver, who is the living image of his father, and 
no more like his brilliant dark-haired mother than 
Betty is. 

Mrs. Driver is a flirt. Every one says so, and 
Driver says that she always was. Mrs. Driver 
solemnly declares that she never flirted with any 
one in her life before she was married ; at which 
Driver, who does not, and never will, know a word 
about Betty’s early liking for Ffolliott, always 
laughs uproariously, little thinking how many a 
true word is spoken in jest. 

But Mab will never tell him more than he knows 
now, not only for Betty’s sake, but for Ffolliott’s. 
Never man or woman lived more quick to recog- 
nize generosity than Archibald Rivers’s girl, Driv- 
er’s wife, and she will always honor the man whom 


118 


DRIVER DALLAS. 


once she despised more than all others on earth for 
the way in which he thanked his comrade and 
rival for the service for which her Majesty gave 
him the Cross for Yalor which bears her name — 
Victoria. 


THE END. 


J. S. WINTER’S NOVELS 


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PLUCK. 16mo, Paper, 25 cents. 

REGIMENTAL LEGENDS. 16mo, Paper, 25 cents. 

MIGNON’S SECRET. 16mo, Paper, 25 cents. 

GARRISON GOSSIP. 4to, Paper, 15 cents. 

MIGNON’S HUSBAND. lGmo, Paper, 25 cents. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New ^ ork. 

P r IIarpkk & Bbotiikrs Will send any of the above works by mail, postage pre- 
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H. RIDER HAGGARD’S NOVELS 


SHE: A HISTORY OF ADVENTURE. Profusely Illustrated. 
4to, Paper, 25 cents; 16mo, Paper, 25 cents; Half Bound, 75 cts. 

There are color, splendor, and passion everywhere; action in abundance; con- 
stant variety and absorbing interest. Mr. Haggard does not err on the side of 
niggardliness; he is only too affluent in description and ornament . . . There is 
a largeness, a freshness, and a strength about him which are full of promise and 
encouragement, the more since he has placed himself so unmistakably on the ro- 
mantic side of fiction; that is, on the side of truth and permanent value. ... He 
is already one of the foremost modern romance writers.— iV. Y. World. 

It seems to me that Mr. Haggard has supplied to us in this book the comple- 
ment of “Dr. Jeckyl.” He has shown us what woman’s love for man really 
means. — The Journalist 

One of the most peculiar, vivid, and absorbing stories we have read for a long 
time. — Boston Times. 

JESS. A Novel. 4to, Paper, 15 cents; 16mo, Half Bound, 75 cents. 

Mr. Haggard has a genius, not to say a great talent, for story-telling. . . . That 
he should have a large circle of readers in England and this country, where so 
many are trying to tell stories with no stories to tell, is a healthy sign, in that 
it shows that the love of fiction, pure and simple, is as strong as it was in the 
days of Dickens and Thackeray and Scott, the older days of Smollett and Field- 
ing, and the old, old days of Le Sage and Cervautes — N.Y. Mail and Express. 

This bare sketch of the story gives no conception of the beauty of the love-pas- 
sages between Jess and Niel, or of the many fine touches interpolated by the 
author. — St. Louis Republican. 

Another feast of South African life and marvel for those who revelled in “ She.” 
— Brooklyn Eagle. 

Mr. Haggard is remarkable for his fertility of invention. . . . The story, like the 
rest of his stories, is full of romance, movement, action, color, passion. “Jess” 
is to be commended because it is what it pretends to be— a story .—Philadelphia 
Times. 

KING SOLOMON’S MINES. A Novel. 4to, Paper, 20 cents; 
16mo, Half Bound, 75 cents. 

Few stories of the season are more exciting than this, for it contains an ac- 
count of the discovery of the legendary mines of King Solomon in South Africa. 
The style is quaint and realistic throughout, and the adventures of the explorers 
in the land of the Kukuana are full of stirring incidents. The characters, too, 
are vigorously drawn. — News and Courier, Charleston. 

This novel has achieved a wonderful popularity. It is one of the best selling 
books of the season, and it deserves its great success.— Troy Daily Press. 

DAWN. With one Illustration. 16mo, Half Bound, 75 cents. 

THE WITCH’S HEAD. 16mo, Half Bound, 75 cents. 

ALLAN QUATERMAIN. Profusely Illustrated. 16mo, Paper, 
25 cents; Half Bound, 75 cents. 


Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

tE~ Any of the above works sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United 
States or Canada, on receipt of the price. 


SOME POPULAR NOVELS 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS Hew York 


The Octavo Paper Novels in this list may be obtained in half-binding [leather backs 
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For a Full List of Novels published by Habpeb & Bbothees, see Habpeb’s New 
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The New Timothy 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; 4to, Paper 

The Virginians in Texas 8vo, Paper 

BENEDICT’S (F. L.) John Worthington’s Name 8vo, Paper 

Miss Dorothy’s Charge 8vo, Paper 

Miss Van Kortland . 8vo, Paper 

My Daughter Elinor 8vo, Paper 

St. Simon’s Niece 8vo, Paper 

BESANT’S (W.) All in a Garden Fair 4to, Paper 

BESANT & RICE’S All Sorts and Conditions of Men 4to, Paper 

By Celia’s Arbor. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

Shepherds All and Maidens Fair 32mo, Paper 

“ So they were Married 1” Illustrated 4to, Paper 

Sweet Nelly, My Heart’s Delight 4to, Paper 

The Captains’ Room 4to, Paper 

The Chaplain of the Fleet 4to, Paper 

The Golden Butterfly 8vo, Paper 

’Twas in Trafalgar’s Bay 32mo, Paper 

When the Ship Comes Home 32mo, Paper 

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A Princess of Thule 12mo, Cloth, 

Green Pastures and Piccadilly. . 12mo, Cloth, 

In Silk Attire 12mo, Cloth, 

Judith Shakespeare. Ill’d 12mo, Cloth, 

Kilmeny 12mo, Cloth, 

Macleod of Dare. Illustrated. 12mo, Cloth, 


1 25; 
1 25; 

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25; 
25; 
1 25; 
1 25; 

1 25; 


8vo, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
4to, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
4to, Paper 
8vo, Paper 
4to, Paper 
4 to, Paper 
4to, Paper 


Madcap Violet. 12mo, Cloth, 

Shandon Bells. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, 125; 

Sunrise 12mo, Cloth, 1 25; 

That Beautiful Wretch. Ill’d. ..12mo, Cloth, 125; 

The Maid of Killeena, and Other Stories 8vo, Paper 

The Monarch of Mincing- Lane. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. 12mo, Cloth, $1 25 ; 8vo, Pa. 

Three Feathers. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, $1 25; 8vo, Paper 

White Heather 1 2mo, Cloth, 1 25 ; 4to, Paper 

White Wings. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, 125; 4to, Paper 


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Harper <& Brothers' Popular Novels. 


BLACK’S (W.) Yolande. 


i-Kioa 


Cripps, the Carrier. 


Lorna Doone 12mo, Cloth, f 1 00 ; 

Mary Anerley 16mo, Cloth, 1 00; 


Birds of Prey. Illustratec 
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Dead Sea Fruit. 
Eleanor’s Victor 
Fenton’s Quest. 


Hostages to Fortune. 


Joshua Haggard’s Daughter. 


Lost for Love. II lustra 
Mistletoe Bough, 1878. 
Mistletoe Bough, 1879. 
Mistletoe Bough, 1884. 


Strangers and Pilgrims. 


The Lovels of Arden. 
To the Bitter End. I 


BRONTE’S (Charlotte) Jane Eyre. 


4to, Paper, 15 cents; 


; 4to, Paper $ 

20 

..8vo, Paper 

60 

..4to, Paper 

20 


15 

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Harper <b Brothers' Popular Novels. 


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PRIOR 

BRONTE’S (Charlotte) Shirley. Ill’d. . 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; 8vo, Paper $ 50 

The Professor. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; 4to, Paper 

Villette. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, $1 00; 8 vo, Paper 

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BRONTE’S (Emily) Wuthering Heights. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth 1 

BULWER’S (Lytton) A Strange Story. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth ] 

8 vo, Paper 

Devereux 8vo, Paper 

Ernest Maltravers 8vo, Paper 

Godolphin 8vo, Paper 

Kenelm Chillingly 12mo, Cloth, $1 25; 8vo, Paper 

Leila 12mo, Cloth, 

Night and Morning 8vo, Paper 

Paul Clifford 8vo, Paper 

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Pelham 8vo, Paper 

Rienzi 8vo, Paper 

The Caxtons 12mo, Cloth 

The Coming Race 12mo, Cloth, 1 00; 12mo, Paper 

The Last Days of Pompeii 8vo, Paper, 25 cents ; 4to, Paper 

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What will He do with it? 8vo, Paper 

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After Dark, and Other Stores. — Antonina. — Armadale. — Basil. — 
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— Poor Miss Finch. — The Dead Secret. — The Law and the Lady. 

— The Moonstone. — The New Magdalen. — The Queen of Hearts. 

— The Two Destinies. — The Woman in White. 

Antonina 8vo, Paper 

Armadale. Illustrated 8 vo, Paper 

“ I Say No ”.16mo, Cloth, 50 cts. ; 16mo, Paper, 35 cts. ; 4to, Paper 

Man and Wife 4to, Paper 

My Lady’s Money 32mo, Paper 

No Name. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

Percy and the Prophet 32mo, Paper 

Poor Miss Finch. Illustrated 8vo, Cloth, $1 10; 8 vo, Paper 

The Law and the Lady. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The Moonstone. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The New Magdalen 8vo, Paper 

The Two Destinies. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The Woman in White. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

CRAIK’S (Miss G. M.) Anne Warwick 8vo, Paper 

Dorcas 4 to, Paper 

Fortune’s Marriage '. 4 to, Paper 

Godfrey Helstone 4to, Paper 

Hard to Bear 8vo, Paper 

Mildred 8vo, Paper 


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CRAIK’S (Miss G. M.) Sydney 4to, Paper $ 15 

Sylvia’s Choice 8vo, Paper 30 

Two Women ,...4to, Paper 15 

DICKENS’S (Charles) Works. Household Edition. Illustrated. 8vo. 

Set of 16 vols., Cloth, in box 22 00 


A Tale of Two Cities.Paper $ 50 
Cloth 1 00 

Barnaby Rudge Paper 1 00 

Cloth 1 50 

Bleak House Paper 1 00 

Cloth 1 50 
Christmas Stories,... Paper 1 00 
Cloth 1 50 
David Copperfield. ..Paper 1 00 
Cloth 1 60 

Dombey and Son Paper 1 00 

Cloth 1 50 
Great Expectations... Paper 1 00 
Cloth 1 50 

Little Dorrit Paper 1 00 

Cloth 1 50 
Martin Chuzzlewit.... Paper 1 00 


Martin Chuzzlewit Cloth 1 

Nicholas Nickleby Paper 1 

Cloth 1 

Oliver Twist Paper 

Cloth 1 

Our Mutual Friend Paper 1 

Cloth 1 

Pickwick Papers Paper 1 

Cloth 1 

Pictures from Italy, Sketches by 
Boz, American Notes ...Paper 1 
Cloth 1 

The Old Curiosity Shop... Paper 
Cloth 1 

Uncommercial Traveller, Hard 
Times, Edwin Drood... Paper 1 
Cloth 1 


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Pickwick Papers 4to, Paper 

The Mudfog Papers, &c 4to, Paper 

Mystery of Edwin Drood. Illustrated 8v», Paper 

Hard Times 8vo, Paper 

Mrs. Lirriper’s Legacy 8vo, Paper 

DE MILLE’S A Castle in Spain. Ill’d... .8vo, Cloth, $1 00 ; 8vo, Paper 

Cord and Creese. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The American Baron. Hlustrated ,..8vo, Paper 

The Cryptogram. Illustrated 8vo, Paper 

The Dodge Club. Illustrated... .8vo, Paper, 60 cents ; 8 vo, Cloth 1 
The Living Link. Illustrated.. ..8vo, Paper, 60 cents ; 8vo, Cloth t 10 

DISRAELI’S (Earl of Beaconsfield) Endymion 4to, Paper 15 

The Young Duke 12mo, Cloth, $1 50; 4to, Paper 15 

BLIOT’S (George) Works. Lib. Ed. 12 vols. Ill’d.. .12mo, CL, per vol. 1 25 

Popular Edition. 12 vols. Illustrated 12mo, Cloth, per vol. 75 

Adam Bede. — Daniel Deronda, 2 vols. — Essays and Leaves from a 
Note-Book. — Felix Holt, the Radical. — Middlemarch, 2 vols. — 
Romola. — Scenes of Clerical Life, and Silas Marner. — The Mill 
on the Floss. — Poems : with Brother Jacob and The Lifted Veil. 
Fireside Edition. Containing the above in 6 vols. ( Sold only in 

Sets.) 12mo, Cloth 7 50 

Adam Bede. Illustrated 4to, Paper 25 

Amos Barton 32mo, Paper 20 

Brother Jacob. — The Lifted Veil 32mo, Paper 20 

Daniel Deronda 8vo, Paper 50 

Felix Holt, the Radical 8vo, Paper 50 

Janet’s Repentance , 32mo, Paper 20 


Harper <Jc Brothers' Popular Novels. 


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Mr. Gilfil’s Love Story 

Romola. Illustrated 

Silas Marner 

Scenes of Clerical Life 

The Mill on the Floss 

EDWARDS’S (A. B.) Barbara’s History 

Debenham’s Vow. Illustrated 

Half a Million of Money 

Lord Brackenbury 

Miss Carew 

My Brother’s Wife 

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Exchange No Robbery 

Kitty 

Pearla 

The Flower of Doom, and Other Stories 

FARJEON’S An Island Pearl. Illustrated 

At the Sign of the Silver Flagon 

Blade-o’-Grass. Illustrated 

Bread-and-Cheese and Kisses. Illustrated 

Golden Grain. Illustrated 

Great Porter Square 

Jessie Trim 

Joshua Marvel 

Love’s Harvest 

Love’s Victory 

Shadows on the Snow. Illustrated 

The Bells of Penraven 

The Duchess of Rosemary Lane 

The King of No-Land. Illustrated 

GASKELL’S (Mrs.) Cousin Phillis 

Cranford 

Mary Barton Svo, Paper, 40 cents ; 

Moorland Cottage 

My Lady Ludlow 

Right at Last, &c 

Sylvia’s Lovers 

Wives and Daughters. Illustrated 

GIBBON’S (C.) A Hard Knot 

A Heart’s Problem 

By Mead and Stream 

For Lack of Gold 

For the King 

Heart’s Delight 

In Honor Bound 

Of High Degree 

Robin Gray 

Queen of the Meadow 


PRICK 

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Harper d Brothers' Popular Novels. 


. PBIOB 

GIBBON’S (C.) The Braes of Yarrow 4to, Paper $ 20 

The Golden Shaft 4to, Paper 20 

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Helen Troy 16 mo, Cloth 1 00 

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A Shadow on the Threshold 32mo, Paper 20 

Among the Ruins, and Other Stories 4to, Paper 15 

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Back to the Old Home 32mo, Paper 20 

Bid Me Discourse 4to, Paper 10 

Dorothy’s Venture 4to, Paper 15 

For Her Dear Sake 4to, Paper 15 

Hidden Perils 8vo, Paper 25 

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Lady Carmichael’s Will 32mo, Paper 15 

Lester’s Secret 4to, Paper 20 

Missing 32mo, Paper 20 

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Reaping the Whirlwind 32mo, Paper 20 

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All or Nothing 4to, Paper 15 

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An International Episode 32mo, Paper 20 

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Harper dc Brothers' Popular Novels. 


7 


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One of Them 

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My Enemy’s Daughter. 


Warlock o’ Glenwarlock 

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Agatha’s Husband. Ill’d 12mo, Cloth, 90 cents ; 

A Legacy 

A Life for a Life 12mo, Cloth, 90 cents; 


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PBIOH 


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Yal Strange 4to, Paper 20 

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Heaps of Money 8vo, Paper 15 

Mademoiselle de Mersac 4to, Paper 20 

Matrimony 4to, Paper 20 

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Athelings 8vo, Paper 50 

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Innocent. 


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12mo, Cloth 1 

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current at the time of receipt of order, except in cases where the sub- 
scriber otherwise directs. 


BOUND VOLUMES. 

Bound Volumes of the Magazine for three years back, each Volume 
containing the Numbers for Six Months, will be sent by mail, postage 
prepaid, on receipt of $3 00 per Volume in Cloth, or $5 25 in Half Calf. 

Bound Volumes of the Weekly or Bazar for three years back, each con- 
taining the Numbers for a year, will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, on 
receipt of $7 00 per Volnmcjn Cloth, or $10 50 in Half Morocco. 

Harper’s Young People for 1883, 1884, and 1885, handsomely bound 
in Illuminated Cloth, will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, on receipt of 
$3 50 per Volume. 

(W~ The Bound Volumes of Harpkr’s Young Prorr.r, for 1SS0, 1881, 1SS2, and 1886 
are out of stock, and will not be reprinted. 


ADVERTISING. 

The extent and character of the circulation of Harper’s Magazine, 
Harper’s Weekly, Harper’s Bazar, and Harper’s Young People 
render them advantageous mediums for advertising. A limited number 
of suitable advertisements will be inserted at the following rates : — In the 
Magazine, Fourth Cover Page, $1500 00 ; Third Cover Page, or First 
Page of advertisement sheet, $500 00 ; one-half of such page when whole 
page is not taken, $300 00 ; one-quarter of such page when whole page is 
not taken, $150 00; an Inside Page of advertisement sheet, $250 00; one- 
half of such page, $150 00; one -quarter of such page, $75 00; smaller 
cards on an inside page, per line, $2 00 : in the Weekly, Outside Page, 
$2 00 a line; Inside Pages, $1 50 a line : in the Bazar, $1 00 a line : in the 
Young People, Cover Pages, 50 cents a line. Average : eight words to a 
line, twelve lines to an inch. Cuts and display charged the same rates for 
space occupied as solid matter. Kemittanees should be made by Post- 
Office Money Order or Draft, to avoid chance of loss. 

Address: HARPER & BROTHERS, 

Franklin Square, New York. 











